


Without Accounting For Our Souls

by stifledlaughter



Series: "I am in the only place that I want to be" [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Action/Adventure, Break Up Talk, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Families of Choice, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Self-Harm, The tags make this seem far more hardcore than it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28240659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter
Summary: "Who are you?" demanded Aomine, holding the boy down, who at the moment was turned to the side. "How do you have my powers?"The boy turned, his blue eyes wide in his tan face, and he froze. "Holy shit, it's you," he whispered."What?" said Aomine, taken aback. "You - I - what?""I'm Diego Salinas," said the boy. "But... I was supposed to be you. At one point."--------(A spin-off fic of umisabaku's "Designation: Miracle" AU series)
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Momoi Satsuki, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: "I am in the only place that I want to be" [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2068698
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Don't Blink You'll Miss It (Lift Up Your Head)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5556464) by [umisabaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/umisabaku/pseuds/umisabaku). 



> a.k.a “what’s your fucking damage, sonic” (this was the title of my Google Doc for the year I was writing it)  
> a.k.a “the fucking Aomine story” (as I affectionately referred to it with my friends)
> 
> Hello! If you randomly found this story and don't have any context of Designation: Miracle, or have only read the first one, you either can catch up and read the 600k+words needed to understand this story, and then read this… or you can hit the back button (a very reasonable response)! (That said, the [Designation: Miracle series by umisabaku](https://archiveofourown.org/series/376820) is totally worth reading and life changing so I recommend it but it is long so no fault if you choose not to lol)
> 
> If you've been following my D:M spinoff stories, hello! I wrote the first part of this story November 2019, and finally, a year later, made this. It is unashamedly 30 headcanons in a trenchcoat shaped into a story. Some important things to note: I deliberately changed some aspects of "canon" to fit this story! Some characters who have not met yet talk as if they are familiar with each other, since I just sort of assumed they had met and then realized they hadn't. Also, when I wrote Momoi's story first, MasaYou wasn't canon. And then, now, a year later, it is! So in this story they have been dating for a few months.  
> I have slightly shifted what powers the Miracles can do based on needing it for the plot. So if you read something and go "huh wait that doesn't sound right" it is probably one of the things I shifted for the story. This is probably the most off-the-rails story I've written as D:M fic. (Also, the scant tagging is because it's D:M and there are like a dozen characters that will be in this story but they real focuses are Aomomo + the OCs.)
> 
> Some notes on the content warnings: This fic contains discussions of sexuality at Teiko, which, as you know, was Messed Up, Bro!! No actual consent violations take place but discussions of what Teiko had planned for them does. Also, as for the self-harm tag- it is not self-harm in the most common usage, but using pain as a method of distraction from current distress, which to be safe I marked as self harm. (Spoilers: characters scratch at their arms and draw blood to distract themselves from stressful situations and quickly heal from it due to their healing powers.) Please take note of these things going into the story- it's probably less than 300 of the 45k of the words, but I wanted to be upfront about it. Also, canon-typical violence/gun use and child abuse because, well, Teiko. 
> 
> Shoutout to [medium-dippers](https://medium-dippers.tumblr.com/) and [designation-miracle blog](https://designation-miracle.tumblr.com/) for pre-reading this and giving their thoughts! Also special thanks for [bmouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse) for putting up with me bitching about writing this story - I am very happy to say that the “fucking Aomine story” is finally finished and I will not complain to you about it again.

_ The first thing that brought GM-B599-RP awake was the slamming on his coffin lid. _

_ No. Not coffin. He would not die in here. He was determined to not die in here.  _

_ The hatch hissed open, and thin arms reached in to haul him out.  _

_ "The Miracles are already out - I heard they all were heading towards the gates. Now's our chance to get out while the scientists are distracted." _

_ GM-B599-RP tried not to look too relieved as he clambered out of his storage unit. He had dreaded possibly running into the Miracles- they were never supposed to have met each other anyway.  _

_ Not that he’d know what to do if he actually ran into the original GM-B599. Someday it might be good to do so, but that wasn’t the hope for today. Today was the day upon which every Project’s future hinged, the catalyst of the rest of their lives sparked by Generation Miracle.  _

_ His only goal for today was to make it out alive.  _

_ GM-B599-RP looked around and noticed the little red lights on the cameras were out, and the other hatch next to him was open. "Did it just start?" He turned to GM-P256-RP, whose long hair was very tightly pulled into a bun. Her eyes were alert, glancing around the room as she glowed pink.  _

_ "No, a few minutes ago, but I stayed, we couldn't get your hatch open so I had to work on it. Now we-" _

_ The room shuddered, and he heard yelling, exploding, scientists running up and down the hallway swearing.  _

_ This was it.  _

_ "How much time do we have to grab the others before the Miracles make it outside?" he asked, and she looked at him, her eyes saying everything. _

_ Not enough time for everyone. _

_ They grabbed the guns from the stunned scientists on the floor and ran out of the room they'd spent most of their lives trapped in. His stomach flipped as he realized that today would be the first day he would see the sun.  _

_ That is, if he made it out of here alive.  _

_ \--- _

Aomine had been on the mountain for a decent while, completely cut off from everyone, and had spent a good deal of that time bitching out loud. 

Stomping around, swearing, and kicking at rocks helped for the first few hours. And then climbing a tree, swearing some more, and jumping from tree to tree like a deranged monkey helped even more after that. 

He was so... tired. Not physically- it took a lot to actually tire him out, versus just being lazy - but he had exhausted all of the options in his head. 

_ If Satsuki wants to dump you and date other people, fine! Let her! We'll find someone else, _ snarled the ugly part of his mind.

_ Oh, really? Someone else who puts up with your bullshit this much? Someone else that knows you, and everything you've done, and still somehow wants to be around you?  _ growled an even uglier side of him. 

_ The others found people _ , mused yet another side.  _ All that happy cheery Miracle Boyfriend crap. Hell, even Akashi found someone. How hard can it be?  _

There wasn't a question in his mind that Satsuki could find others. Easily. A snap of her fingers and boys (and probably girls) would come running.

No. She'd be fine. She wouldn't miss him. Clearly, she wouldn't, if she even breached this topic in the first place. 

_ You're being a dick,  _ chastised his kinder self, the one that only came out around Satsuki and, rarely, Tetsu. 

_ I am a dick, _ snapped his ugly self back. 

"This is bullshit," said Aomine aloud, angrily, exhaling with his rumble in his throat. He threw another rock for good measure, watching it ping off a tree with a dent in the bark.

_ Oh now you're being an asshole to trees? You just want to go back and talk to her and figure it out- _

"I'm not going to talk to her and figure this out, she dumped me," muttered Aomine. Which, he knew she didn't. She just wanted to talk about it. Didn't mean they were over. 

But fuck if the thought didn't lance through him, painfully. The mention of her wanting someone else. To him, that was as good as over. If she wanted to go, he wasn't going to keep her where she didn't want to be. 

_ You all left everything else behind. It makes sense your pairing would too, _ said the wise jerk in his mind. 

"We're boyfriend and girlfriend. We're not  _ paired _ anymore like that," said Aomine, trying to reason it out with himself. It sounded hollow. 

He knew that she'd joked about seeing other people. That Seirin girl, for example, although from what he heard, she was doubled up with her teammates so that probably wasn't an option. And honestly, he couldn't see himself doing that. It'd worked for them. Didn't mean it'd work for him.

And she'd call him out on it too. She'd be able to tell him he didn't want it, and he'd have to tell her it was true, and she wouldn't want to force himself to do something he didn't want to do. 

The sun was beginning to slowly, slowly dip down behind the trees. He'd left his phone behind so he wouldn't have to deal with the incessant beep-beep-beep of texts. 

_ The beeps mean they care, you fuckwad _ , snapped his kinder self, who was rapidly getting annoyed with this bullshit.  _ Go back and be there. You don't even have to talk. You can ask to think it over. She'd give you that time.  _

Of course she would. Satsuki would do that for him, even if she didn't want to be with him. Because she loves him. 

_ Loved?  _

_ Does it even fucking matter?  _

And that's when a flash of blue caught his eye. He froze on top of the rock he was on, intensely staring at the spot across the mountain where he'd seen that light. 

There weren't any cars on this side of the mountain - in fact, it was impossible to navigate at best and often left alone, which is why Aomine was stomping around it and complaining out loud rather than being on the part that was easier to run in. 

Aomine crouched behind some bushes and watched for another-

There! A flash of glowing blue, brightly flaring and then disappearing, like an aborted attempt at an action. It looked to be about a mile away.

"Oh  _ fuck _ ," breathed Aomine. He knew that shade of blue. He knew it very well. 

It was his own. 

\---

He kept his eyes trained on the light as he stalked forward. He felt some sort of weird cold feeling dousing him as he moved closer, like he was moving through half-frozen syrup, but the feeling only lasted for a few seconds, and then he could move normally again. It was fairly warm out, not the burning heat of the sunlit day, but still summer, so he wasn’t sure what that was all about. Perhaps it was a mountain draft, brought in from a stream?

He kept his slow pace as to not alert whatever was over there, but it seemed to only be one person. He slowly crept over towards the blue light, now about thirty feet away. Given how thick the trees were, it'd probably be fairly hard to spot the light unless you were on this side of the mountain at this time of night.

"Okay, I'm going to try to hit this a little harder - Tala, back up, I don't want to hit you-" The voice Aomine heard from the spot where the glowing was sounded young, slightly lilting with an accent Aomine didn't recognize, but still speaking Japanese. 

And it was also a very, very familiar voice. 

Because it was his own.

Already feeling immensely weirded out by all of this, Aomine crept closer and closer to see a young man glow blue and run into a wide, metal door, and bounce off, rolling backwards into the dirt, prone on his back. "Aww, okay, that didn't work, but let me try again!" 

Before the boy could sit up, Aomine leapt and pounced, slamming the boy to the ground. Normally his first instinct would be to kill, as clearly this was someone from Teiko but he briefly remembered that there were Splices and this could just be one of the runaways or orphans who had been tricked into being Spliced. So killing would have to wait. 

He also was trying to be better about that, but that didn’t mean that the ingrained reactions of killing on sight weren’t still lurking there. 

"Who are you?" demanded Aomine, holding the boy down, who at the moment was turned to the side. "How do you have my powers?"

The boy turned, his blue eyes wide in his tan face, and he froze. "Holy shit, it's  _ you _ ," he whispered, and then his face pinched. "Oh  _ no!  _ I've used my one bad word of the day."

"What?" said Aomine, taken aback. "You - I - what?" 

"I'm Diego Salinas," said the boy. "But... I was supposed to be you. At one point." 

"I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, kid," said Aomine, noting that the boy wasn't fighting him or trying to escape. God. He looked just like Aomine, except for a fairly big scar that scooped from the inner corner of his right eye down below his cheekbone and then back up to his ear. "I saw you glowing from across the mountain - which, by the way, running this close to night? Anyone can see you, and I don't know what you're planning here by trying to break through that wall-"

"I'm not evil or anything!" the boy -  _ Diego,  _ Aomine thought to himself with incredulity - said. "There's- there are people trapped in there and I'm trying to get them out. But we have to go now, we're out of time before he comes back-"

Aomine wasn't stupid so he said, "I'll get up but I'm going to hold onto your arm so you can't run away, got it?"

"Okay," said Diego, nodding vigorously, and again Aomine wondered what the hell was going on as they sat up and Diego pointed towards a very dark copse of trees. "My camp is over here, about a hundred feet away." He then closed his eyes and squeezed them for a few seconds, and then shook his head. "Okay, hope that worked."

Aomine, unsure of whatever the hell that was, just gave the kid a weird look and said nothing. But as they walked there, Aomine finally broke the awkward silence and said, "Explain that 'I was supposed to be you' thing. How do you know who I am? Am I even who you think I am?" But given the look on that kid's face, and the glow, Aomine didn't doubt the kid knew who he was. Anyone with access to the internet knew who Generation Miracle was, and he suspected this kid would have a reason to look them up if he had powers too. 

Diego looked almost apologetic as he stepped around a patch of thorns. "You're Aomine Daiki, from Generation Miracle, the ones who destroyed Teiko." 

_ Okay, so he's got that part right.  _ "And you are..."

"My designation - you know, back at Teiko - was GM-B599-RP. The RP stands for Replace Plus. I was part of the Replace Plus program in case any of the Successes died... they'd just take me out of storage and swap us out in case, well, you know. But you didn't die so it never happened." Diego pointed at another direction. "Okay, now we gotta go through this sort of rock valley-"

"How are you here?" interrupted Aomine sharply, his head spinning. "All of the other Projects died that day."  _ We left them all to die,  _ he didn't say. It ate at all of the Miracles, some more than others. Aomine didn't have the worst guilt but he still felt it gnaw at him sometimes. And this... Replace Plus program?

"Um... not... actually," said Diego, pulling Aomine through a narrow, natural alleyway between several enormous split boulders. "I can't tell you, maybe I can after all this is done, but... that's not true. You know now about me, at least. Even though I wasn't supposed to ever meet you." 

Aomine felt sick and elated at the same time. 

Sick that they had had no idea about anyone left behind. 

Elated that there were  _ survivors.  _

"It's not much but it's home, I guess!" said Diego, who had led Aomine to a cave off to the side of the high rock walls surrounding them. "Well, not  _ home _ , you know, but where I've been staying since I got here a week ago."

"From where? And I'm not letting you go yet," said Aomine as Diego tried to pull away a bit to clean off a flat slab of rock with a blanket on it. 

"I can't tell you that," said Diego, looking genuinely pained about it. "I know you don't trust me, Aomine-san - oh, did I do that right?"

"Do what right?" asked Aomine, entirely bemused. "My name?"

"The honorific! We don't use them so I had to get used to it being in Japan," said Diego, looking mightily proud of himself. 

"So you're not in Japan and you don't use honorifics, so you probably don't speak Japanese at home," said Aomine, putting the pieces together, and Diego groaned. 

"I'm going to give it all away and my moms are going to  _ kill _ me." 

"Moms?!" Now Aomine had passed bemused and was just flabbergasted. "Is- is this an elaborate prank? Kise, is that you, you little shit?" Given that Kise had Perfect Copy now, it wouldn't be unreasonable for Kise to Copy a younger version of Aomine just to fuck with him. 

"Kise Ryouta? No, I'm not him," said Diego frantically, shaking his head. "I -okay, I'll prove it to you." He shucked off his pants with one arm, as the other was being tightly held by Aomine. "I've got my designation - right here-"

And there it was, tattooed into his thigh, the same as every other Project. 

**_GM-B599-RP._ **

Aomine stared at the RP part for a few seconds. "I never heard of the Replace Plus program." Then again, he mostly focused on his Generation and didn't give a shit about anything else. Maybe Satsuki knew- 

No. Stop. Can't think about that. 

_ Her.  _

(Fuck.)

"Well, not many made it to my age," said Diego, pulling his pants back on. "Three. Me, Nao, and - um... GM-P989-RP." 

"He didn't choose a name?" asked Aomine, wondering why any freed Project would keep their designation, and Diego's face fell.

"He didn't make it out." 

_ Oh.  _ Just because there now had been at least two survivors (if this Nao Diego had mentioned still lived), it didn't erase all the bodies Aomine had seen as they walked through the rubble to meet the JSDF. He still remembers some of the faces, bloody and still, as they raced ahead. 

"That sucks," said Aomine, unsure of how to offer the entirety of crushing guilt that all of the Generation Miracle felt for what happened to the other Projects due to their selfish desire to flee. And given how Aomine had been torn about even leaving, he felt even crappier. 

"Thanks. It still hurts. But that's just... how it goes," said Diego, and Aomine, sensing that at this point Diego wasn't going to sprint away, dropped Diego's arm. 

"What were you talking about earlier?" asked Aomine. "People trapped inside the mountain?" 

Diego nodded. "There are two people in there who were Splices, and one of them escaped but is staying in the facility, and the other is still captured. Tala said that someone was coming, someone to help them, help us- so now that you're here that must mean you-"

"Whoa, whoa, back up," said Aomine, holding his hands up. "Facility? Captured?"  _ What the hell is going on here?  _ "I came out here to - well, I'm done doing that now, I was going to head back to Tokyo today." Granted, he had absolutely no clue what to do when he returned, what to say to Satsuki, or how to continue when his world was flipped upside down, but he certainly owed it to his Generation to not flake out and disappear given that Akashi got kidnapped and all. He'd rather not set everyone off into a panic because he'd get no end of it when he got back. 

(In the back of his mind he knew that they were probably slightly panicked he left his phone but he hadn't given a shit at the time and he still kind of was hard pressed to at the moment. They could deal.)

"But you have to be the person Tala saw in her vision," said Diego, practically begging at this point. "I've tried on my own but with the stupid barrier on this side of the mountain, I can't go get help-  _ oh no _ ."

"I'm going to hate what you're about to tell me, aren't you?" said Aomine, his stomach dropping at Diego's horrified face.

"You felt that weird coldness when you came to find me, didn't you?" asked Diego. "That sort of slow, icy feeling? That's the barrier, you can't leave once you're in. That's how they trap people here. And it cuts off all communication, my phone can't get signal. I think there's a blocker inside." 

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," groaned Aomine. "Who are  _ they? _ "

Diego grimaced. "Two Teiko scientists who escaped arrest."

Aomine felt an icy hand grip his gut. "Fuck." 

"They got ahold of some kids who were Spliced projects who escaped when the second Teiko fell. One of the scientists Spliced himself with a Rainbow so that's how he's controlling the kid that didn't escape. That one's Takeshi, and the other that did, that's Tala. That's who I was talking to." 

"Back up," demanded Aomine. "A scientist  _ Spliced himself with a Rainbow?" _

Diego nodded, his eyes very wide and alarmed. "Yeah, and he uses the powers a lot, which is really weird, because using the powers hurts Rainbows so they don't do it too much but I think he's just so.... broken that he doesn't care. "

Aomine frowned. "What are you talking about, kid? Rainbow powers only hurt other Projects, not themselves."

Diego shook his head. "No, it hurts Rainbows to use their powers. That's why my Ocean Mom doesn't do it unless someone's going to really hurt themselves or die."

This wasn't as important as other things he could address so Aomine chose to ignore that for now. "Okay, fine so - you were talking to someone. Tala, right?" Diego nodded furiously. "How do you communicate with her?"

"Through the door - she can hear my thoughts, but if she's close enough I speak. But once it's night, she goes and hides in the walls near Takeshi so she can work on digging the hole out of his wall. There's a gap in the wall I drop food in for her. She's not like us- she can't go days without eating without feeling bad." 

Aomine remembers the testing - he was one of the few Blues who could go a whole week without negative impact of starvation. They'd praised his creator for it.  _ A true Success, _ they'd said.  _ Worthy of the title Miracle.  _

"So she's gone to help - Takeshi?" asked Aomine, beating down the thoughts of  _ This isn't your damn problem  _ and  _ Holy shit what the hell was going on in Teiko that we didn't know about?  _

Diego nodded. "Yeah. I think they escaped Second Teiko together. She doesn't remember much of her past, and he doesn't really either, but they helped each other get past some of the brainwashing stuff that happened at Second Teiko. They call each other brother and sister. I think it that’s how they got through it together.”

This was all too much. Far too much. He needed a minute to think. 

But he only thought well when he was moving. 

“Hey kid, you wanna learn how to actually run?”

\---

_ “You understand why you’re here and they’re not?” asked the scientist. It was this scientist that Blue saw the most, the head of the Blue Projects. He tapped his tablet thoughtfully as he looked around the bloody room.  _

_ “Is this a trick question? Obviously they’re dead,” said Blue, gesturing out to the bodies of the others that were being picked up and carted away to who knows where. This test- rounds of bullets shot at them as the Blues were supposed to dodge the assault- had whittled the ranks down to just Blue himself. Blue winced as his ankle healed from a graze, the skin rippling as it went from bleeding to smooth again. His shoulder wound had healed fast, as that had been how he’d been hit first.  _

_ The scientist thwacked Blue across the arm with the prod, and Blue hissed as it cut through his skin easily. Damn him, damn that scientist and his stupid special prod for Blues and Purples. “Don’t mouth off to me, Project,” said the scientist. “You’re not here because you’re the best runner. You’re here because you heal the fastest.” The scientist glanced down at Blue’s arm, which was still bleeding long past when it should have healed. “Except when I get to use this, of course.” He laughed a little bit, and Blue resisted the urge to run away. _

_ Because running means more hits, slower healing, and more time away from his Generation.  _

_ He couldn’t protect them if he was injured and bleeding. And so, as his skin tried to knit itself together, he stayed quiet, anger bubbling in his chest as he thought of the minutes ticking away until he got to be away from here, back in the bunks with the others again. _

\---

"Okay, so, show me a sprint again," said Aomine. He watched as Diego zipped across the meadow and back instantly. "Jesus. You're going to lose your ankles before you turn sixteen if you keep running like that. You need to- okay, here-" and walked over to him, positioning his feet. "Use the balls of your feet more, and your steps are a little too big." 

_ Playing the teacher? Really, Daiki?  _ he thought to himself, but he felt some sort of obligation to this kid. He didn't seem as trained as Aomine was at his age, which Diego had told Aomine was twelve. By then he'd already hit 2,500 miles per hour. This kid was barely passing 1,500. 

"Did you get any training?" asked Aomine, watching Diego again. 

"Uh... not really, I think," said Diego, shifting back and forth. "Just basic stuff like not running into walls and controlling it from when I ran with my power and ran without it. They only took me out and did training when - uh, when they thought I'd be needed." 

_ “In case any of the Successes died... they'd just take me out of storage and swap us out in case, well, you know.” _

"When was that?" asked Aomine, his throat dry.

"It wasn't often. Only three times, I think. After Bucharest, because you all took a long time coming back. Then after Shizuoka City, with the whole poisoning thing. And then, um.... well... they actually nearly swapped us after Cairo."

_ That sounds about right.  _ Aomine remembered the blinding pain, the agony of seeing Black nearly die in Orange's arms, returning to see Pink's horrified face as she watched them crawl out of the plane, utterly broken and defeated. 

"We were training for weeks, but in the end, we got put back into storage again." Diego bit his lip and glanced up at the sky. He inhaled slowly, as if he was trying to regulate his breathing. "Because you guys pulled through."

"Not all of us," said Aomine bitterly. He could still hear Pink's screams in his mind, calling for White, and then, later, Black yelling for Orange. Their collective shock at losing Brown to his own folly. And, worst of all, Red's complete silence on the topic of Gold after the mania took him. All deaths that came from the single event of Cairo. 

"Right," said Diego. "I... I know I don't completely get it, but I sort of do. And that sucks a lot. I'm sorry."

It felt incredibly bizarre to see someone who looked just like him being open and soft about feelings. Like an alternate universe where he had been allowed to be kinder. 

"Yeah, well, it's whatever," said Aomine, trying not to get too touchy-feely with his clone because it just felt really weird. But then he didn't want to set a bad example for him, so he said, "Thanks."

_ Set a bad example? You existing is a bad example. Does he even know you didn't want to leave Teiko and basically had to be dragged out?  _ The voice in Aomine's mind was on a rampage today, it seemed. 

Aomine mentally crushed the thought beneath the heel of his mind and said, "Let's try the sprint again." 

_ \--- _

The woods had been too quiet, and if the camping trips with her father taught Sayuri anything, it was that woods that were too quiet were to be feared. She kept her hand on her gun, and her radio close to her throat. One button-click away, the line to the JSDF reporting center would open.

It was dark, and she felt like she had been walking forever, but knew she was getting close because the woods were getting quieter, and it felt like there was a hum in the air.

Something nagged at the back of her mind to _run, leave_ but she was a soldier. She walked towards the things that other people (rightfully so) often ran from.

Instinct suddenly yelped at her to look up and she did, hand adjusting on the gun, and she flicked the radio on.

On the side of the mountain, something streaked in blue, a comet-flash that she knew well.

_ Daiki!  _ Her heart pounded as she breathed out in relief. Thank fuck he hadn’t run off to Russia or Mexico or something. Now how to approach him and throw him into the cat-bag so he wouldn’t run away-

And then, far more alarming happened.

There was another blue streak, zipping away from Aomine, and then back.

Sayuri clicked ‘live’ on her radio. “This is Private Sayuri, I’ve got a lock on Aomine Daiki, and he’s got company. Intel requested for any other Blue Projects. We’ve got an unknown one here. Over.”

A voice crackled on the other line, and it was Michiru. “Roger. Sergeant Sakurai here. You found Daiki and a bonus Daiki? Aren’t you supposed to be on a day off? Anyway. Over.”

Sayuri watched the two on the mountain, like the oddest fireworks display she'd ever seen, and then realized that it wasn’t a dance.

It was a fight.

“Don't send backup yet,” said Sayuri. “It looks like they’re fighting, and if it’s another Teiko project, I’m guessing that’s not good. Will assess more of the situation before requesting backup. Over.”

“Roger. Stay on the line. I’m going to call in Sacchan– if there’s info out on this one, she’ll find it. Over.”

Sayuri snapped the radio back onto her chest and crept closer to the mountain. She knew the stories of the other Teiko projects that had shown up unexpectedly, but she thought, surely, at this point, they were all accounted for.

Apparently not.

_ \--- _

_ GM-B599-RP had to get to the east wings - that's where the last few Projects were that he was supposed to hand off to R13103. But everything was insanity, chaos. He didn’t even know where the Miracles were at this point. Hopefully not near him. _

_ He crawled through the air vents, seeing flashes of scientists running below, shouting.  _

_ "They're heading towards the doors to go outside!" _

_ "Where do they think they can possibly go?" _

_ "It'll be a fucking massacre, what did we do, my God, they're unleashed-" _

_ "Shut up! They're not even to the gates yet-"  _

_ "They're going to kill everyone! They're going to destroy the world! There's nothing that can stop them now-" _

_ "Cut the hysterics, give me your device, we can detonate the gate bombs-" _

_ "The Pink cut the signal-" _

_ GM-B599-RP moved quickly, feeling guilty, because he was having the same thoughts.  _

_ Would there be a world left after they got out? All of that anger inside himself at being kept trapped like an animal, all of that fear of being caged again (even now, being here, in the vent, was overwhelming). Imagine what would happen to the world if the seven of them, with their powers combined, decided to take revenge.  _

_ "In the vent!" shouted someone and there was a smattering of bullets shot up, and he skittered away, collapsing down from the ceiling into the hallway that was part of a bright, expansive area. GM-B599-RP crashed to the ground.  _

_ He scrambled up, ready to dart away, but there already was the click of a gun and then a fired bullet and he had never been able to move fast enough to completely escape bullets, not yet- _

_ But the bullet only kissed his cheek and sped off at a sharp angle, and the scientist was thrown back, the gun rising into the air and snapping in half, the pieces clacking to the ground.  _

_ GM-B599-RP turned, wondering how someone had reacted that quickly, only to see the Green Miracle, GM-G7283, staring back at him as the rest of the Miracles ran ahead. The Miracle’s eyes behind his glasses were wide, and before anything else could happen, GM-B599-RP sprinted away, now with a clear shot to the east wings. _

_ The Miracles had left a wake of scientists behind them, the ones that tried to uselessly fight them. As GM-B599-RP stepped over the bodies to break open the door so that he could free the other Projects, he thought, that, maybe, if that Miracle had thought to save him, perhaps, they were not intent on destroying the world. _

_ Perhaps they just wanted peace and quiet too.  _

_ \--- _

“We have a situation, likely worse than we thought,” said Michiru, gesturing to the projection on the wall of the mountain where Sayuri said she had gone. “Good news- we found Daiki. Bad news- he’s fighting what appears to be another Blue.”

“Not possible,” said Momoi immediately, her voice breaking slightly but holding steady still. “All of the other Blues died in Teiko.”

“Perhaps a Splice from the second Teiko?” ventured Kuroko, but Akashi shook his head,

“My father said there were no Splices unaccounted from their original saves after the break,” Akashi said firmly.

“That doesn’t mean that a Splice didn’t get away in the mess of it all. We know that there were a few unaccounted for when we destroyed the second Teiko. Maybe this one has just been living on the mountainside this entire time.”

“And decided to pick a fight with Aomine?” asked Midorima incredulously. “The Splices were not trained or as powerful as their original counterparts. I do not think a Splice could effectively hold up in a fight against Aomine.”

“In the records from the second Teiko, there were only three Blue Splices, and all of them are reported to be there right now in SAPRRCOE,” said Akashi, looking over to Michiru. 

"Sayuri's gone in, and that's what matters right now," said Michiru. "At the moment we are not sending in backup - it seems like an isolated incident. If we don't hear from her within a day we will reevaluate. Sacchan, we're going to need you to do more research. You probably want to do it from home with your setup, I imagine.”

"Understood," said Momoi stiffly. "Can I leave now?" 

"Report to either Youji or I what you find, whoever you can get a hold of fastest. Everyone else, keep an eye on your phones. If any message that seems like it's from Daiki gets to you, or Sayuri, let me know immediately," said Michiru. "Dismissed."

As the Miracles filed out, Youji raised an eyebrow at her from the back of the room as he shut the door. "We’re just going to wait?"

"Sayuri can hold her own. And I hate to admit it, but so can Daiki. He's trained, and we try to make ourselves forget, but it's always there. Between their two skills, I don't think a half-bit Teiko escapee is much to worry about," said Michiru. "You know what the real issue will be, though?"

"Dragging Aomine-kun back?" asked Youji.

Michiru sighed. "That's my guess. Youji, of all of the kids here, he might be one of the harder ones to read. He probably was genuinely upset about Sacchan's choice, but it's not like him to up and leave forever. I was honestly surprised he was gone this long. But that doesn’t mean he’ll come back easily." 

Youji frowned. "Same. But if it's a fight, it means he got caught up in something. So it's possible he intended to return earlier." 

There was a slight movement behind the fogged glass window of the door, and then silence.

"What are the chances that Satsuki-chan was listening at the door?" asked Youji mildly.

"Fairly high." Michiru sighed. "It's nothing that she doesn't already know that I think, though." 

Youji opened the door to catch a glimpse of Momoi turning a corner. He shut the door again. "I'll pack a bag in case we get called to go there, but I'll defer to you on this, Michiru. Send who you want to send, I'll fall in line." 

Michiru felt warmth kindle in her chest at his words. "That's a relief to hear, Youji. Thanks." 

She glanced at her phone again. No new messages. 

This night was going to be an exercise in patience, it seemed. 

_ \--- _

_ "We'll stop at the top of the mountain," said Aomine, pointing. "I mean, I'll win, so I'll meet you at the top of the mountain." He grinned and she was once again reminded of how (stupidly) handsome he was.  _

_ They'd traveled out to one of Aomine's favorite spots to run, a mountain that had twisting, winding roads leading up to the top. It wasn't as popular as other mountains within range of Tokyo, as it was just outside of the usual daytrip timeframe, but Aomine wasn't hindered by travel times like most people.  _

_ But occasionally he and Satsuki would come out to the mountain, at first so he could run her up it to the top for the view. But now, she could carry herself up. _

_ Satsuki knew he would beat her, but she revved the bike's engine anyway. "You'll be eating exhaust fumes, Dai-chan. Just you wait." She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed with unrestrained joy.  _

_ "On the count of three?" he asked. She nodded, and they counted together, "One... two..."  _

_ She accelerated the bike just as "three" passed their lips, and they were both off, careening up this deserted mountain highway out in the middle of nowhere.  _

_ The bike rumbled beneath her and she felt her bones singing with the vibrations. She loved this speed and power; it was something she felt she lacked compared to her fellow Miracles. Because their bodies were superior in terms of speed and strength, she felt she had been cheated somehow with her comparatively weaker constitution.  _

_ But with this, well, maybe she could at least touch the sky that they flew in.  _

_ The wind tore past her face as she climbed higher, careful not to turn too fast on the corners. She watched as the blue glow streaked in front of her, barely visible as she watched the road get swallowed up below.  _

_ "I love it!" she shouted over the din of the bike and the rush of the wind past her face. "This is amazing!"  _

_ They turned another corner and Aomine used this opportunity to run directly alongside her. They continued like this for several turns, loose strands of her hair flying behind her.  _

_ "That sure is a lot of talk for someone who won't win this race," called out Aomine, and she yelped out indignantly. With that, he sped off, and she could see him streaking up to the top of the mountain, which was coming closer and closer.  _

_ She was used to watching him run, but now she could catch up. She sped up, eyes on the prize, climbing to the top where he was waiting.  _

_ Cresting the top, she slowed as she came to their usual sightseeing plateau. He was of course already there, leaning up against a cliff face, pretending to check his phone. "Took you long enough."  _

_ Satsuki turned off the bike and set the kickstand. The tech thrummed beneath her, and she thanked it for its service, gently tapping the headlights. She felt the familiar hum of the electronics happily acknowledging her gratitude. Unbuckling her helmet, she hooked it on the handles, shaking her hair out to tumble down her back.  _

_ As she headed over to Aomine, she noticed the sun was already setting, something she'd missed as they had come up the mountain shaded by trees. The warm red glow illuminated the city far away, and Satsuki took a moment to appreciate the view from this high. _

_ "Next time, I'll win," she said, stepping forward and setting her head on his chest. He pulled her close, languidly, and propped his chin on top of her head.  _

_ The last few times they had come up here, they'd acknowledged, in their quiet way, the shift in their relationship. It wasn't something either of them knew how to describe, but it was there, lingering. It was almost like they already had the answer to the question they were still trying to formulate - a response to their need to be with each other, to hold each other in silence when they didn’t feel the need to do that with others.  _

_ "We'll have to find you a faster bike," noted Aomine. "But this one is good for now." _

_ "Thanks for running along with me. I know you can go faster than that but it's nice that you stayed at my pace." She felt his hands tighten and squeeze her, hugging her tightly to him.  _

_ "What's the fun of racing you if I can't see you there with me? It'd be like running alone, and I can do that anytime."  _

_ She nestled her head into his chest, as she had been doing for years. It just fit well, and his heartbeat, a steady melody throughout her life, pulsed beneath her forehead.  _

_ They stayed there until the night fell, and descended the mountain at a (relatively) leisurely pace.  _

_ \--- _

Using brush as cover, Sayuri army-crawled forward, eyes focused on the blue flashes. As she got closer, she felt a slow, sinking icy shudder through her body. She tried to pause, but the coldness gripping her gut urged her forward, so she kept crawling, wondering if she'd passed over some sort of weird mountain stream wind vent or something. (It made no sense, but she was a detonations expert, not a geologist.) 

She continued forward until she heard voices, making sure to listen carefully if Aomine sounded wounded or scared.

"Are you - no, no, you're going to snap a shin that way. Put your weight forward when you crouch. Okay, now you can jump. Jump at me, do it."

"I'm  _ trying!  _ I'm not used to-"

"Oi! You want to jump as fast as me? Put your weight-"

Quicker than she could blink, Sayuri saw the smaller blue blur zip towards the larger blue blur, and before she could pull out her gun, Aomine had swatted the smaller one down. 

"You were going to hit my shoulder, not my chest. Your aim was off. You favor your right leg." Aomine sounded annoyed but not on edge or in pain. 

"I think it didn't heal good after something once." The smaller voice sounded... eerily familiar. "Think it was after a test break. They didn't set it right." 

"They set yours for you? They just left us to our own devices. Pin-, uh, one of my Generation would set mine for me." 

"I wanna try again, one more time, before we go to sleep." 

Feeling that she had to announce herself before Aomine caught on that someone else was nearby, and not wanting to be on the other end of his defensive nature, Sayuri announced, "Wasn't aware you were a teacher, now, Daiki!" 

"What the - what the fuck are you doing here?" yelped Aomine, and in the dark, Sayuri got close enough to see the small form of -

Holy shit. 

_ A tiny Daiki.  _

He looked similar to how Daiki first looked when they'd arrived on base. The cropped hairstyle, the same body type, same swaying movement as he stood, always in motion. 

Tiny Daiki turned and yelped too. "Ah! Aomine-sensei, do you know her?" 

Sayuri grinned as she stood up, brushing the dirt off of herself. " _ Sensei _ ?"

"I told you not to call me that," grumbled Aomine. "And yeah, I live with her. Did she- they- did Shigure-san send you?" 

"Who's this?" asked tiny Daiki, looking up at Aomine with no small amount of hero-worship in his eyes. 

"Sister," said Aomine, which made Sayuri snort. "By the way, you need to eventually explain  _ your _ guardian situation, Diego. What the hell is the Ocean Mom you mentioned earlier?"

"Ah, I'm not really supposed to say," said Tiny Daiki nervously. "But it's not because I don't want to! I just need to ask my mom permission first."

"Everyone's looking for you, jackass. You left your phone at home on purpose," interrupted Sayuri, needing to move things along. "And no, I came on my own. Figured you'd be here."

"So Satsuki didn't- nevermind." Aomine shrugged, trying to pass the gesture off as not giving a shit and clearly failing, in Sayuri's eyes. "Not my damn business."

"Dumbass," she snapped. "Anyway, can you explain -" She gestured at Tiny Daiki. 

"Oh! Hi! I'm Diego Salinas. It's nice to meet you," he said, smiling broadly, still clearly a bit nervous.

"Are you here from Teiko?" she asked, her hand still on her gun, although if this was another Blue, she wouldn't have time to make a shot before she'd be disarmed and probably dead. 

"I was at Teiko once but we escaped," he said, his voice a little sadder and softer. Which was something else weird, this uncanny valley of seeing Daiki's face with emotions like vulnerability showing. "And I'm not supposed to tell you more but I promise I'm not going to hurt anyone. I just want to get Tala and Takeshi out of the Rainbow scientist's lair."

Sayuri's brain rushed to unscramble this absolute fuckmess of a sentence. "The who from the what of  _ whom _ ?" 

Aomine groaned. "Fuck it. Let's start from the top, Diego." 

\---

Sayuri came to quickly realize several things in the minutes where Diego was explaining the situation. 

  1. Apparently they could not leave this place due to this weird-ass barrier, or get in contact with the JSDF. Her cell phone wasn’t working either. 
  2. There were survivors that had not been noticed leaving by the JSDF as Teiko burned to the ground, something that will both bring immense joy and also immense guilt to her superiors that were on the ground when it happened.
  3. Tiny Daiki was extremely, _extremely_ energetic.



"Does that all make sense? I know I speak fast," he said, his voice spiking as he anxiously looked at her. "It's just so exciting to meet new people, I hardly ever do! All I know is my Village."

"Which we will get to later," she said, because that was a whole can of worms that she was not ready to crack open yet. "And there's a Teiko scientist in there? With two kids?" 

Diego nodded solemnly. "He's fortified the place really well. I can't get in without tripping sensors, but I think he thought it was the wind because I got away so quickly with no cameras catching me.”

Sayuri, like many of the family members of the Miracles, had no shortage of fantasies of beating the crap out of Teiko scientists. Michiru, in a drunken rant, once expertly detailed how she would punch precisely every part of the Pink scientists faces, down to the kinds of punches. 

On the other hand, Sayuri was a kicker. And she let herself imagine a moment where she kicked this evil, evil scientist so hard that he could not remember how to torture children anymore. Although honestly at this point, any attack would do. She was generous like that. 

Allowing for a short dream of escapist bliss, she quickly returned to the moment. "Well, let's not waste any time. Can we get a message to - Tala, was it? Let her know that we'll be coming in the really early morning hours. Hopefully when the scientist is sleeping."

Diego shook his head. "Since he Spliced himself with a Rainbow, he only sleeps in little naps, Tala said. Teiko projects need less sleep than regular humans. I only sleep three hours a night."

Sayuri raised an eyebrow at Aomine. "And yet  _ you _ have slept for twelve hours at a time."

"It's a hobby, piss off," he said, and Sayuri noticed with interest that he normally would have sworn more at her or been rougher. She glanced over at Diego, who was looking at Aomine with no small amount of awe still, as if he couldn’t believe he’d met him.  _ Huh. Didn't know that Daiki would put on appearances for anyone.  _

"I'm going to go run in circles for a while," said Daiki after a while. They had fallen quiet as Sayuri set up her bedroll near where Aomine had set up his. 

"Knock yourself out, kid," said Sayuri at the same time that Aomine said, "Don't favor your right leg, it'll fuck up your gait."

"Got it, Aomine-sensei!" said Diego cheerfully, and ran off (thankfully without using his powers, likely due to the scolding he got earlier from Aomine about being seen.)

"I'm getting the idea that he's not used to holding back," said Sayuri idly as she set up near the fire to cook some fish that Diego had gotten for them. She had rations, but honestly, it'd been a while since she'd been camping like this, so she might as well get the full experience. 

"Yeah, from what he accidentally said- this kid is shit at keeping secrets - the other escaped Projects are somewhere around mountains but not in Japan." 

"Given his name, I'm going to hazard somewhere in Latin America, South America, or Mexico, unless they made their way to Spain," mused Sayuri. 

"He'll say it eventually," said Aomine, poking at the fire for no reason other than to do something, to fidget. "I get the idea that he's not used to holding things back from people. And he seems to trust me for some fucking reason." 

_ Because you chose to leave Teiko,  _ thought Sayuri, looking at her brother.  _ And he trusts anyone that left the way he must have.  _

Silence fell between them as the fire crackled with the fish, and then Sayuri said, "Look, we need to talk." 

"If you came here to yell at me-" he started, voice both tired and angry, but Sayuri shushed him.

"No. I'll get your side of the situation at some point, but for now, you're going to listen to my story," said Sayuri, flipping over the fish with two sticks. "And you're not going to interrupt me until I'm done."

Normally Aomine would fight her on this, because he was an incredibly contrary fuck at the best of times, but now he just gave a mild grunt in response.

Good enough. She wasn’t even sure if this story would hit the mark, but she had a suspicion, and was rolling with her gut on this one. 

"When I was fifteen, my best friend was very pretty." Aomine rolled his eyes at this and she swatted him. "No interrupting!" Before he could protest, she continued. "She grew up very fast, it seemed like overnight she went from being a girl to a woman. And that terrified her. Because all of the sudden, men would catcall her, grope her on the train, guys she thought she could trust would hit on her and not stop, all of that bullshit."

Aomine didn't say anything but kept his eyes on the fire. 

"So one day she was talking to me and told me that she was glad she could be with girl friends, because girls would never see her like that, and she was safe with us." Sayuri shoved a log over, and sparks spat out of it, rising into the sky and disappearing. "What she didn't realize was that I had been in love with her for a few years at that point, and almost had gotten up the nerve to tell her. But after that, well...." She trailed off and continued to poke at the fire. 

Aomine turned and stared at her. "Did you?" he asked, very quietly, feeling that they were past the point of 'no interrupting'. 

"No. I stopped talking to her after that." She tossed the whole stick in the fire, and sparks again floated up into the air. "I was a shit friend. I hated that I had the same thoughts as all of those creepy guys and that I had become something that she hated. I was just as bad as them, except worse, I was a wolf in sheep's clothing because they all thought I was safe, but I wasn't."

"You didn't... do anything, did you?" asked Aomine, and Sayuri noticed his face was clenched, distraught. 

"No, of course I didn't," said Sayuri. Her voice was very tired and very sad. But it was important she told this story. 

She had never spoken it aloud.

"But I was stuck in my head for so long I lost a friend and didn't figure out how to stop hating my sexuality until I was in college. And I didn't want to talk to anyone about it, because Mom was dead and everyone was fucked up, and I was fucked up, and I didn't want to be another problem." 

Aomine stood up and started to gather more kindling from around their campsite. Sayuri knew this was his restlessness, and not a disinterest in the story. If he was that disinterested, he would have told her to shut up by now. 

"I heard that she's married and has a few kids now. So it didn't even really matter that I loved her, I guess. It didn’t change her life at all. But I'm not going to ever forget feeling like I was some predator whenever she hugged me, or when we slept in the same bed during sleepovers. Like just having those desires could hurt her, because everyone else's desires did." 

Dropping a bundle of kindling close to the fire, Aomine sat down on the log next to Sayuri and put his head in his hands.

"That sucks," he said, and coming from him, that was the most emotional support she'd ever gotten from him.

Sayuri glanced over at him, and decided that that was probably enough feelings for one night, for the both of them. "So, where the hell do you think Diego is actually from? Think he's telling the truth?"

Aomine sounded bored when he said it, but Sayuri could tell he was still processing what she said. "Yeah. Kid didn't even try lying when I first found him. My best guess is that he escaped from the original Teiko the same way that Nash Gold and Jason Silver did. I'll have to ask - I'll have to figure that out when I get back."

_ Cool, cool, so we're still not talking about her, I guess _ , sighed Sayuri mentally as Aomine abruptly stood up again to gather yet more kindling.  _ Well, at least he didn't run screaming during my story.  _

She wasn't going to mention that some days she did still feel like a creep when she saw a beautiful woman and stared. She'd gotten good at the quick-glance technique, but it still felt like betrayal sometimes, even when it was her own girlfriend or someone down to hook up for the night. Nowadays, it didn't make her feel sick inside whenever she thought about a pretty coworker or a cute barista, the way it used to when she was figuring out why guys didn't interest her but her best friend did. It did take a lot of work though. Given all of the baggage Aomine still had from Teiko, he probably was going to have a harder time of processing whatever his feelings were. 

It wasn't hard to see the way he looked at Momoi sometimes - this fear of what he could want, of what he did want, and that something there was stopping him from ever asking for it. 

She threw another log on the fire and looked up at the stars. 

Everything was a lot clearer out here than in Tokyo. 

_ \--- _

_ "Do you know why I called you in here?" asked the scientist, his eyes stern behind his glasses. There was an unopened box in front of him, as well as the tablet he always carried with him.  _

_ Blue shrugged. "More testing?" There wasn't a Gold in the room, so he felt less scared of lying. He knew exactly why he was here. It was the same reason they'd brought him in the past two times. Same lecture, same threats.  _

_ The scientist propped his hands up on his chin and tilted his head at Blue. "She's there for you, ripe for the taking. And yet you don't even look at her anymore." _

_ Blue gripped the sides of the chair he was in, making small dents in the plastic. "I don't know what you mean." But he did. Or at least, he had an idea of what they wanted, which, in its vagueness, was terrifying enough.  _

_ The scientist smiled. It was not friendly or joyful the way a smile should be. "Of course you do. We know you have the thoughts of taking her. But you stop yourself. There would be no consequences of doing so. It is encouraged, in fact."  _

_ Blue hated the way the scientist said 'take', like Pink was an object to steal, like ration bars. "Don't want to." _

_ "So you do know what I'm talking about."  _

_ Blue winced. Dammit. He wasn't made for this clever evasion, these conversation games. This was what Red and Gold were good at. Not him. He needed a clear plan, a visible goal, something to achieve. Not this. "I don't get why you'd want me to..." He didn't finish the sentence. He wasn't even sure what the images in his head were half the time when he thought of Pink, except they terrified him, and what's more, he knew that she was terrified of something too.  _

_ Maybe it was him. The thought of that made him sick, like he wanted to run away from himself, but he couldn't do that. So he was just... sick.  _

_ The scientist waved his hand. "Unnecessary for you to know. But because we're having such a struggle getting you to act on your animal instincts, we're going to push things along." He took out a syringe from the box on the desk and tapped a button under the desk, causing handcuffs to spring out of the armrests and lock Blue down to it. Blue tried to jerk away, but his tracking bracelet shocked him, and he bit back a yelp.  _

_ "I can't have you ruining these tests for me. This should have been an easy win for my team, but we didn't expect you to resist this much. In fact, we're surprised you didn't engage with your mated pair sooner. But this should fix it, and we'll be back on schedule for our prospective new arrival in less than a year."  _

_ Blue struggled, and was shocked again, and that's when he felt the sharp pain in his arm, the needle sinking in, and he felt warm, too warm, hot, burning, and- _

_ Darkness. _


	2. Chapter 2

"We shouldn't rush this," said Sayuri, looking at the plans that Diego had sketched out in the dirt. "According to this, the scientist has an erratic sleep pattern as well as someone else in there with him, so we can't sneak in during a time when we assume they're sleeping. And they've got so many wires and traps around powered by Takeshi because he's - Spliced with a Pink, you said?"

"Yeah," said Diego, who was nervously gnawing on his hand. "So he's using one of the Teiko tools he took with him - it - it siphons out Pink power, links them to a machine you can’t pull them out of- it's awful."

Aomine swallowed back the bile climbing in his throat. 

Yeah. He knew the tool. 

"So we probably need to get Takeshi to shut down for a second - so it's when  _ he's _ sleeping that we need to go in," said Sayuri thoughtfully. "You said there were traps out front that stop you usually?"

"Mhm," said Diego, nodding. "The first day I set one off but because I heal fast it's okay. I only got a bunch of shrapnel in my leg. I think it was a tripwire that triggered an explosion." He gestured at his leg, which had no scars and seemed perfectly fine. Even though Aomine was completely convinced at this point that Diego was an actual clone of him, repeatedly seeing proof of it still messed him up. 

He shook his head and spoke, moving on from his thoughts. "Sayuri, can you kill the traps? Or even better, take one with us to set it off at the wall, blow the wall up?"

"Should be a breeze." Sayuri drew more lines with a stick in the dirt, outlining as Diego eagerly nodded along. "Would love to be able to go back for reinforcements- could really fucking use some backup - but I've been in shittier situations. If Daiki carries me, I can be there and back quickly in case it does go off and I can't deactivate it in time to give it pause to reactivate."

"You volunteer me to carry you?" snorted Aomine. 

"I can do it too!" piped up Diego. "I'm strong." 

Sayuri raised an eyebrow. "No offense kid, but I'm taller than you. I'm going with Daiki on this one." 

"I can prove it!" Diego held out his arms, and pouted as Sayuri shook her head, cackling at him. "Okay, I'll prove it to you one day, I swear!" 

"Go back to the wall and check if Tala's there, Tiny Daiki," said Sayuri, giving Diego a little shove. "I'll work out the plan details with this guy here." 

As Diego sprinted off, Sayuri turned to Daiki. "Real talk. You think you can get me from the front of the compound where the traps are to Tala's wall in less than three seconds? We can clear the way of debris first."

Aomine nodded. "Definitely." 

Sayuri sketched out a step-by-step of the bomb deactivation, scribbling out dirt and redrawing the blueprints. "I imagine it's this kind it should be able to be paused and reactivated... especially if it's by an actual scientist and not some shitty homebomber in his basement. Means there might be an actual timer on it that resets." 

Aomine didn't often dig into people's personal lives but he had always wondered about Sayuri and her relationship with the JSDF. "Why did you become a detonation expert?" 

"No swearing? I'm shocked," she said, and Aomine flipped her off. "There we go, that's the Daiki I know. Anyway, I like the adrenaline rush, solving puzzles, and it sounded super badass. Seemed like a good fit. And I always knew I was going into the JSDF anyway so it was just picking a track from there." 

"Never considered anything else?" 

Sayuri paused her sketches. "Hm. No. I always admired Mom and Michiru-obasan, and it was in the family. Even after... yeah. Even after, I wanted to. Maybe more after." After a few seconds of silence, she said, "He's not like you."

"He's my literal clone."

"In body. Not in personality."

"Yeah well," Aomine said, glancing around to check if Diego was coming back anytime in the next few seconds. "He never got sent on a mission. Kept him locked up in storage all the time. Different lives." 

Sayuri looked at Aomine with a measured look. "Another question. What's that tool that's siphoning off Takeshi's power? Don't lie, I saw your face when Diego mentioned it." 

Aomine bit his cheek and growled, "If we reach him, you can't just pull out the cords right away - it has to be slow. It'll fuck him up if it’s all at once. Comatose for days. If you yank them, you don’t know if he'll come back. Some Pinks didn't."

Another few seconds of silence. 

"Fuck Teiko," said Sayuri with surprising gentleness for a phrase usually uttered with angry, violent intent.

Aomine huffed out a bitter laugh. "Yeah. Fuck Teiko."

Later, Sayuri would think, amused, to herself, that there was a term for what ended up happening- Situation Normal All Fucked Up. 

This wasn't a normal situation, but it sure was Fucked Up. 

\---

Diego had come back and said that Tala noted that one of the scientists - there’s a main and then the assistant- had been thinking that he was going to sleep soon. He'd also said he spied three traps that were set up near the front of the compound, hidden in the grass, and that Aomine would be able to spot them too. 

"We don't know if he actually will sleep, so we still need to be cautious," said Sayuri. "But this might be our best chance. Diego, you said the partner is another scientist, but he didn't Splice himself with anything, right?"

He shook his head. "Not that Tala knows anyway. But she has a harder time getting a read on him as he doesn’t come close enough to where she can go for her to mindread.”

Sayuri bit her lip. "That's less info than I usually like having going in, but we don't have time for more. From what Daiki told me, that tool could kill Takeshi." 

Aomine hated how the stinging adrenaline in his arms and legs needled at him. He wanted to  _ run run run _ as he was born to do, as his body constantly screamed at him to do. He glanced over at Diego, who was looking at him and Sayuri with complete trust. 

_ Did I ever look at anyone like that?  _

_ Besides-  _

"Fuck, let's just- let's just go already."

Sayuri patted down her pockets and satchels that were strapped on her waist, tapping her uniform armor. "On it." 

And then they were off.

\----

The easy part was getting the bombs. Like plucking mushrooms off their stalks out of the ground, Sayuri scooped them up and went to work. She deftly disabled them within seconds and Aomine ran her off to the wall where she dropped them, re-activating them. Aomine then hauled her off behind some trees, taking note to make sure no bits of explosive or fire got on the trees themselves. Diego watched next to them, staring intently, furrowing his brow like he was mentally yelling at Tala to stay back. 

It had been a while since Aomine had been around Projects that could read his thoughts. The thought still unsettled him - after all, Golds were part of why it was so hard to escape from Teiko in the first place. Even thinking about it, especially a plan, could get you scrapped immediately. 

But this kid, this Tala, hadn't asked for it - to be Spliced. Or, in that fucked up way he had heard, the second Teiko scientists guilted kids into taking the powers, which made him sick. Fury bubbled in his gut, and he watched the wall get rocked with explosions and felt vaguely satisfied.

Finally, he could  _ do _ something about all this. 

Diego took off to try to find Tala. Aomine darted in with Sayuri behind, and for a few minutes, things seemed to be going according to plan - they were narrowing down which rooms were unoccupied, and eventually they found a large room with several tanks with small shreds of material in them that Aomine recognized as failed starts to Projects. 

And in the back and center of the room was a small boy, perhaps ten years old, a blindfold wrapped around his eyes.

_ Takeshi. _

He appeared to be asleep, but Aomine knew that he wasn’t- he was awake in this hellish, in-between state, wired in with all of the tangles of cords stuck in his arms and attached to his head. Takeshi faintly pulsed pink, but it came and went in waves. 

“He’s fading fast,” muttered Aomine quietly to Sayuri, whose eyes narrowed in anger at the scene. “You can’t just rip out the cords- you have to deactivate each one. Remember what I told you?” 

“Of course,” she said, and she went behind the child swiftly, quiet as she moved around the mass of cords that spiraled out of the child like poisonous jellyfish tentacles. Once she was behind the chair that Takeshi was in, she was completely obscured. 

Aomine scanned the room as she silently shifted the wires around. He didn’t see any other doors- there was only one way in or out. Given that the scientists must have heard the explosion, he was just waiting for one to come in here. 

Within a few seconds, he indeed heard the footsteps in the distance with his extra-sensitive hearing, and readied himself. He tapped the floor twice, and he heard Sayuri swear slightly under her breath.  _ They’re coming.  _

They’d debated blocking the door once they found the room, but decided that it was possible the scientists would try to blow through the door, and possibly injure Takeshi, who had no way to protect himself. It was better for Aomine to be standing guard to take out the scientist, and subdue him before he could find Sayuri in the back dismantling the device used on Pinks. 

But even the knowledge that the scientist was arriving didn’t prepare Aomine for the horrific sight of the head Blue scientist entering the room. He, as always, had that damned tablet in his hand, the other hidden behind his back, and he gave a crooked, manic grin at seeing Aomine.

The man was literally pieces of his former self. The strong jaw, the salt-and-pepper hair, and the slight build were the same, but entire chunks of his skin were sewn on, and the tones of the skin varied wildly. One of his eyes was black, bloodshot, while the other was the gray it had been before. His mouth was jaggedly altered as well, as the lower half of his face was similarly grafted. 

“Jesus fuck,” spat out Aomine loudly, making sure that Sayuri heard and that he overwhelmed any movement she might be making. “You’re a sight for sick eyes.” He maneuvered where he was standing so that scientist wasn’t facing towards Takeshi, hoping that he could distract him for long enough for Sayuri to finish her work. 

The scientist continued to grin in an incredibly unsettling way. “Oh, both of you here? How exciting. Koshi is dealing with GM-B599-RP, but the little brat’s putting up a bit of a fuss, so I left to see if he had been sent as a distraction. And he  _ had been,  _ it seems! But strategy was never your strong point, GM-B599, so that was easily figured out.”

“Get fucked,” snarled Aomine, and that’s when he saw the scientist swiftly move his hand out from behind his back. With a curl of anger in his stomach, he saw the long cattle prod device in the scientist’s formerly hidden hand, dripping with blood. He felt nauseated, and his arms and legs stung in sympathy with Diego, who likely had taken that hit as the scientist was leaving. 

The scientist smiled, and his lips curled back unnaturally as he did so, as if the skin was trying to leave his face. “Do you remember this? I’m sure the Purple Miracle does. So glad we got these to work on you fast-healing types. Slowing down the recovery of a cell? Quite the scientific breakthrough.” 

“You couldn’t have used that research on something better than torturing us?” snapped Aomine, who was fighting the urge to run away because that thing  _ hurt.  _ He wasn’t a stranger to pain, but it had been specifically designed to cut through the special fast-healing cells of the Miracles and wound them as if they were regular humans. It was awful. And Diego likely hadn’t felt it in years, not since he left, and now was somewhere facing off with the other scientist, bleeding. 

And how  _ was  _ the other scientist facing off with Diego? Surely Diego’s speed was more than anything that the human scientist could have tried to combat him with.

“If you’re wondering how Koshi-san is faring,” said the scientist, lazily spinning the prod in his hands, his voice eerily lighthearted for someone standing in front of a former assassin. “He’s got his own ways of dealing with people. Makes them see things his own way, whether they like it or not.”

Suddenly the information that he’d heard from Kise about the Legacy screamed like a cacophony of clamoring voices, and he was torn between running past the scientist to save Diego and staying here with Sayuri. 

The scientist extended his hand and flashed in that iridescent Rainbow hue that Aomine had grown to despise as a Project, and Aomine’s body screeched in pain as he fell to his knees, gritting his teeth.

It wasn’t as strong as a full Rainbow but  _ fuck _ if it didn’t hurt. He slowly got to his feet, desperately listening for any sound from Sayuri, but thankfully heard none. 

"Why are you here alone, GM-B599?" asked the scientist, clearly not terrified that his former experiment was standing before him, furious. "What did you possibly do that could make you leave your Generation? Or worse, what did you do that caused them to force you to leave?"

"Shut up," growled Aomine, knowing he had to stall further for time for Sayuri to work her deactivation on the tool. "You don't know shit about me."

"I made you," said the scientist. "I wove your DNA together. There's a piece of you in me, did you know that? Along with some of the others on the team, of course.”

Aomine stiffened but did not react otherwise. 

"Do you know why you were kept, GM-B599? Surely you do. I told you before. The others, they burnt up the soles of their feet. They dried out their eyes. Their muscles spasmed and killed them mid-sprint. Speed? No, GM-B599, you survived because you healed faster than any other Project. And your protection drive! Impeccable. I've never seen a Blue so attached to their Generation. So, I ask you again, GM-B599 - did you do it- did you finally achieve our goal? All these years later? Is that why you're here, alone, when you were always supposed to be in a team?"

"No," snapped Aomine, resisting the urge to run over and snap the scientist’s neck. He was supposed to curtail these pulses of murderous rage- that's not who he was anymore. Not GM-B599. He was Aomine Daiki: asshole brother, Touou ace, and member of the freed Generation Miracle. He hasn't killed anyone on orders since he was thirteen. And he hadn't killed anyone of his own volition since Haizaki. 

And no matter the baiting, Aomine would not outright kill this man. No matter how much the adrenaline, as always, pushed him forward. 

He tried to listen for Sayuri, even a small noise amongst the various sounds of the lab, but there was nothing. His enhanced senses only told him that the scientist was fixated on him, eyes flickering over his body.

"Truly my greatest design. The Orange scientists, the White scientists - failures. But me? I made Successes. I was the one who paired you and GM-P256. What could Teiko have been, had you two procreated? A far better lot than these atrocious Splices, that's for sure."

"You're a Splice now, idiot," snarled Aomine. "You mixed yourself with a fucking Rainbow!"

"I'm a scientist, not an experiment," said the man confidently. Aomine couldn't help but stare at the haphazard stitches on his head, the creepy skin grafts on his collarbone that showed in the dip of his shirt. 

"You look like a damn patchwork doll," taunted Aomine, wondering if he could sprint away before the scientist could activate his powers again. 

The scientist sighed and stepped towards Aomine. “Now, now. I can’t use you as you are but I could very much use parts of you. Such a useful heart, for example. The Blue Splices had such potential, you know-”

Before Aomine could make the decision to try to rush the scientist, there was a loud, high-pitched shriek from what seemed to be several doors down, faint but clear, and the scientist turned around, giving Aomine a moment to run and knock him to the ground. 

_ Kill him _ , said his instincts, bubbling to the surface.  _ Finish the blow. Protect your Generation.  _

Instead, he reached to grab the prod to hurl it away, but shuddered under the ripple of Rainbow power that tore through his body, and Aomine rolled away, growling under his breath. 

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” said the scientist, and Aomine realized in growing horror that he had ripped the seams that had stitched the different patches of Rainbow skin to the scientist’s body. Aomine tried to scrabble away, but the Rainbow power felled him. He feebly tried to kick out in attack, hating how weak he felt. 

_ Fuck, I can’t die!  _ thought Aomine angrily as the scientist advanced, clearly not very affected by the pain clearly wracking his body. His mouth twitched in pain but he kept walking, eyes wide and now slightly frenzied. That expression looked familiar. 

It looked like - 

“You’re Spliced with that fucking crazy Miracle Rainbow,” gasped Aomine, his voice shaking with the strength it took to speak through the waves of Rainbow power crashing through him. 

The scientist laughed, and it chilled Aomine to the bone. “Took you long enough to recognize! Yes, after your Gold’s little stunt in the cafeteria, we boxed up his remains and kept them around, but never got to use them in our efforts to rebuild Teiko. Some brain, some heart, and a lot of skin - took forever to get enough in me to actually bring the power to life, far more complex than those other Project Splices. There wasn’t a whole lot left, after your Gold got ahold of him, but enough, it seems.”

He shook his head, switching weirdly back to something like a disappointed but fond father. “I was hoping to keep you alive, but your body, freshly dead, will serve fairly well. What a shame. You were such a Success. You and GM-P256 were the crown jewels of Teiko. And for what? You never had any children in the end. You didn’t even try. Such a waste.” 

The scientist raised the prod above Aomine. He was furious in his inability to defend himself, his body laid bare to be killed, and he could only think,  _ I’m so fucking sorry, Satsuki. I’m so fucking sorry. _

And that’s when there was a loud  _ clunk _ sound, and something wrenched itself from the ceiling, crashing down on the scientist. Aomine, freed from the Rainbow powers, scrambled away towards where Sayuri was to see her with a gun out, eyes narrowed.

In the seat, Takeshi was freed from the coils and cords, hand outstretched at the ceiling, where he’d apparently wrenched a light fixture free. 

“Takeshi had been working on that while you two were bitching at each other at the end, but if he hadn’t gotten it free, I would have shot him,” said Sayuri. “I’d had typed what was going on into my phone as Takeshi was being unlinked so he could know what was going on without me speaking it aloud, so he has a vague idea of our plan.”

“We have to get to Tala!” said Takeshi urgently, and he stood up, slightly wobbly. Aomine immediately reached out to steady him, and was struck by the memories of when he would help Pink after she would detach from the wires. The memory hurt, and he winced.

No. No time for that now. 

“We’re going to find her,” said Sayuri firmly, and she jerked her head at the scientist. “Daiki, it’s your call now.”

He wasn’t the type to kill anymore. Rather, he didn’t want to fall back into being that type. That’s not who he was trying to be. 

Instead, he grabbed a bunch of the cords and wrapped the scientist up in them, not really caring if they were uncomfortable. (He was done being a killer, but not quite done being petty.)

“We’ll come back for him later,” said Aomine, and he held Takeshi in his arms, checking his face for signs of returning color. “You’re coming back offline now?”

“Mmm… I think I’m back,” said Takeshi woozily, and Aomine breathed out a sigh of relief. 

Not all Pinks came back from there. 

\---

_ “GM-B599, report to the Computer Analysis facilities.” The noise startled him out of the zone he was in while dodging the knives hurtling at his face. “GM-B599, report immediately to the Computer Analysis facilities.” The communicator band on his wrist beeped. _

_ Green paused and looked at Blue, lowering his hands. The knives on the wall wrenched themselves out and returned to their sheaths on Green’s legs. “You must leave now. I will inform Gold of your whereabouts. Our practice is concluded, it seems.” _

_ Blue nodded and sprinted off, anxiety building in his gut. He had a suspicion of what this was but didn’t want to be right. Unfortunately, coming into the Computer Analysis facilities, he saw he was, unfortunately, all too correct. _

_ Pink was slumped over a keyboard, her fingers tightly gripping it, but the rest of her body slack. The screen flashed and gibberish scrolled across the screen. Two scientists stood next to her, writing down notes on their clipboards and speaking to each other quietly. The pink glow from her body was dim but continuous. Wires crawled out of her, tacked on with sticky pads, some directly in her neck.  _

_ “What’s going on?” snapped Blue, zipping over and reaching out to touch her, but his hand was smacked away by one of the scientists. He hissed at the contact- he hated the weighted batons the scientists carried with them, almost as much as the cattle prods. _

_ “She’s gone too far in,” said the scientist who had struck him. But it was almost more like he was speaking to the other scientist rather than Blue. “It’s common for Pink Twos- they can’t pull themselves out of the computer. Forget they’ve got bodies. What a shame -this one almost had potential to be a Success.” _

_ Blue’s stomach twisted because he knew the scientist was right about her condition. Just the day before, he’d talked to Pink and was unsettled by the conversation. _

_ “They want to see if I can put all of me in the system,” she had said anxiously when they were, in a rare occurrence, alone in the barracks. They had found a specific spot in the room that, if they whispered and hid their mouths, the cameras wouldn't pick up on anything. “But when I go in, it’s like I’m being sucked in and I start to drown.” She squeezed his hand tightly as she gnawed at the nails on her other hand. “I don’t know how to pull myself out. But they say they’ll start making me do it next week.” _

_ “You have to have something to come back for,” Blue had said firmly, trying to make some sort of sense. He wasn’t the smart one – that was Red’s job – but no one knew Pink better than him. Even White had to ask Pink questions that Blue already knew the answers to. “There has to be something you need to get out of there for that you can’t get in there. Your brain needs a reason to swim back to the surface.” _

_ Pink had nodded. “Something… like you? You can’t go in there with me.” _

_ Blue had wished he could. He could protect her out here- even though it got him punished sometimes, he could stop the scientists from hitting Pink by redirecting their ire to him. _

_ But he wasn’t made to go into the wires and code of the computers like she was. He imagined she became water, spilling into the cables and tubes and swimming in there. And he stood outside, unable to follow her there. _

_ Nodding, Blue reached out and took her nail-bitten fingers and curled them in his other hand. “I’ll call you back. If you ever go too far in there, you can know I’ll be on the other side.” _

_ Pink smiled, her face still scared, but better than before. She pulled him in for an embrace, and he let her, because she could basically do whatever she wanted and he would go along with it. _

_ Probably forever.  _

_ And now he looked at her now, all wired up and still. She seemed almost lifeless there.  _

_ “Let me touch her and talk to her,” demanded Blue. “If whatever you tried didn’t work, this won’t make it worse. She’ll die if this keeps going.” _

_ The scientist, again, did not actually acknowledge Blue’s words, but instead glanced at the other scientist and shrugged. “Be sure to keep track of his vitals too.” The other scientist nodded and pulled out a computer pad from his coat, tapping, and Blue’s tracking bracelet flashed. _

_ Seeing this as an affirmative, Blue reached out and touched Pink. She did not stir or react. He wrenched his arms under hers, trying to detach them from the keyboard, and lifted her head. _

_ Her eyes were open but lifeless. The crimson there was glazed over, staring forward, and Blue’s chest clenched tightly. _

_ “Pink, it’s me,” he said, desperate. “I’m here. Swim up. Swim to me. I’m here, come out, I can’t follow you there. You’ll have to come to me. Please.” He squeezed her arms, and then, using his shoulder as leverage, managed to pry her hands from the keyboard. They went limp and she fell forward on top of him, head lolling to the side as he whispered again, voice breaking, “Pink, come back, Pink, it’s better out here than in there, come back-“ _

_ And then he heard a creaky gasp, and her body shuddered, and the pink glow dimmed. He panicked, reaching to find a pulse, like Gold had taught him whenever they checked to make sure their targets were dead. But this time, he was looking for the steady thump, as opposed to its absence. He found it, and exhaled slowly in relief.  _

_ He slowly began to peel the stickers and wires off her under the cold, calculating eyes of the scientists. He’d heard around from other Blues, failed pairings, who had ripped their Pinks out of the wires and they’d died.  _

_ In this, unlike other things in his life, he was slow. Methodical. Careful.  _

_ He’d always be this careful for Pink.  _

_ Once finished with removing the wires, he went to pick her up fully, holding her with one hand under her legs and one under her back. “I need to take her to the medical center.” But he knew they had to clear him to do that, and if they didn’t, the best he could hope for was setting her down to sleep it off.  _

_ The scientists wrote down notes on paper and in the pad. One said to the other, “Response from mated pair proved effective, per your hypothesis. His vitals heightened to normal levels in stress-related circumstances. GM-P256 has restored, if weak, vitals. No medical intervention necessary.” _

_ Blue growled, and at that, the scientist turned to him. “Do not cause trouble.” Blue eyed the prod on the scientist’s hip and then looked back at Pink’s face. It was pale and drawn but slowly getting color back. She needed sleep and food. He could barter with Yellow for his ration bars, since she might need more than her allotted share, and he was pretty good at stealing more if he needed to. _

_ Heading towards the door, Blue said, “I’m returning to the barracks then. She needs to sleep.” _

_ The scientists did not respond but merely turned back to talk to themselves. He, again, took this as affirmative and headed towards the barracks. _

_ When he entered, Green, Gold, Yellow, and Red were in there, and immediately barraged him with questions. _

_ “Why are you carrying Pink? What did they call you away for?” demanded Red.  _

_ Yellow ran forward to touch Pink, gasping, “What did they do to her?” _

_ “They made her do things with her powers she isn’t ready for,” snarled Blue, his rage rising. But he had to care for Pink first. “Yellow, I’ll need your bunk on the bottom.” _

_ Yellow nodded and said, “I’ll get her some water and food. I stole some more ration bars yesterday.” He went back into Black’s bunk, where he removed a small panel in the corner, out of view of the cameras, and pulled out some of the wrapped bars. Hiding it under his clothes, he crept over to his bunk, where he surreptitiously unwrapped them and passed them over to Blue, who was arranging Pink on the bed. _

_ “I do not think using White’s powers here would be useful,” commented Gold, tilting his head, and Red frowned at that. “This is exhaustion brought on by power overuse. She likely needs more sleep and food.” _

_ “Has she said anything?” asked Yellow, pawing at her leg worryingly. _

_ Blue shook his head, pushing her hair back from her forehead. “No, she just stopped her glow and then woke up from… wherever she was. But she hasn’t said anything yet.” _

_ Red glanced over at Gold, and they maintained eye contact for a moment. Blue always was unsettled by this, because he always felt unsettled when Gold read his mind, but Red seemed to find it useful.  _

_ As Blue continued to touch Pink’s face, trying to see more color in it, Gold said, “Understood. I will bring White by to be with her, but not use her powers. Her presence might prove useful as a comfort, given her Latent Overflow.” He swiftly exited the room. _

_ Red turned to Green. “Green, inform the rest of our Generation of this, and cover for Pink should she be requested. I will stay here with Blue and Pink.” _

_ Green stiffly nodded and left the room as well. _

_ “They made her go fully into the computers, even though she can’t do that yet,” Blue said, anger coating his words. “No other Pinks can do that yet, they aren’t strong enough yet. We lost two more last week to this.” _

_ “But she was not lost, our Miracle Pink,” said Red thoughtfully. “There must have been a difference.” He looked at Blue. “They called you to her but did not tell you why.” _

_ Blue shrugged helplessly. “I just tried to pull her back out of the computer by talking to her, and then when she responded, they said, ‘Response from pair mate proved effective’.” He had heard the term used for him and Pink, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it all entailed. _

_ Red blinked slowly, looking at Pink, and then back at Blue. “Stay by her side, Blue. I believe that you are why she returned when the other Pinks did not. If Generation Miracle wishes to keep our Pink, we must make sure there is always a Blue as well. Your tendency for recklessness will not be tolerated if Pink’s well-being is tied to you.” _

_ There was no order given but Blue didn’t need one anyway. Telling him to stay with Pink was like commanding him to breathe. He didn’t even know if there were any other options for him. _

__

\---

They headed out of the room, Aomine noting with bitter amusement as Sayuri leveled a brutal kick to the scientist’s side as she exited behind them. 

“Might’ve broken his rib there,” Aomine commented under his breath as they turned the corner, his eyes darting around to try to find where the shriek earlier had come from.

“Serves him fucking right,” she said with venom in her voice. “Slow down. I think we’re-”

There was a groan, barely audible to Aomine’s ears, but enough to grab his attention. “Turn left here,” he said curtly, and immediately kicked open the door where he thought he heard the voice to see Diego curled up there, his arm gashed and bleeding. Aomine could see that the skin was slowly knitting itself back together, so the prod must not have struck him as deeply as the scientist had thought. 

But Diego was still unmoving, and Aomine handed Takeshi off to Sayuri, who maneuvered the boy around to ride piggy-back on her. “I’m going to check out this room here,” she said, and Aomine nodded and turned his attention back to Diego.

Diego should be healing far faster than this, prod wound aside. It was hard to keep a Blue down, especially one cloned from Aomine. Something wasn’t right here.

It was possible it was just his worry that made him think the wound should be healing faster. But he shoved that thought aside, focusing on checking Diego’s vital signs- pulse, breath, skin color. 

Aomine bent down and grabbed Diego’s shoulder, and felt that he was cold. “Diego, wake up,” said Aomine urgently, and felt this sense of dread, fear, and helplessness at seeing his own face slack and quiet. 

But then Diego groaned again and twitched, and Aomine sighed out in relief. “Diego, can you answer me? Where’s Tala?” He didn’t know how to say, ‘Thank fuck you’re alive’ without sounding mushy about it, but it took more restraint than he’d thought to not blurt it out. 

He was getting soft. 

“Other scientist- Koshi - he did some - Gold mesmerizing thing? Threw me in here- but then Tala came - they went to- the big warehouse part-” 

“Let’s go,” said Aomine, hefting Diego up. Diego stumbled to his feet and shook his head, not unlike a dog, as his eyes appeared more focused. 

“Daiki, Tiny Daiki, get in here,” said Sayuri from inside another room. When they entered, she was scrawling something rapidly on a piece of paper. 

“Is this their office?” asked Diego, looking around wide-eyed. Aomine glanced around as well- it appeared almost banal - the everyday bureaucracy of papers and coffee cups, but in the middle of a facility where children were being tied up and tortured. 

“Something like that,” said Sayuri. “Look, I figured something out. If we can get Takeshi to overload the system for a few seconds, one of you two can get out and get word to the JDSF. From there, we need to get Sacchan to - I don’t know, do  _ something _ to shut off this damn grid.”

“Coordinates,” said Aomine. “Give her the coordinates for here and she can shut down everything around it, it’ll kill the field.” They’d done similar things enough times when they were at Teiko, and he knew she could do it from afar. 

“I’ve got the last coordinates my phone was tracking before I got in the field, it’ll be approximate enough,” said Sayuri, taking out her phone and writing down numbers on the paper. “Daiki, write down your instructions for Sacchan.”

He took the paper from her and scribbled what he remembered of the similar orders they had back at Teiko, recited calmly in Red’s voice. And then, before he could stop himself, he wrote,  _ I’m sorry _ and then shoved the paper back at Sayuri, daring her to say anything.

Apparently feeling generous in her goodwill, Sayuri said nothing as she folded the paper up. “Takeshi and I were talking - he thinks he can pause this field for a second, but it takes a lot out of him, so it’s got to be quick. Daiki, you’re faster-”

“Nope, send Diego,” said Aomine firmly. “I’m better in combat, if it gets to that. We still need to find Tala and from what I’ve pieced together, this - Koshi or whatever is Legacy. Think he’s got powers like a Gold.” 

“Fuck,” swore Sayuri. “That’s how he got you, isn’t it, Tiny Daiki?” 

“I think so, but it’s hard to remember, and I know I messed up,” admitted Diego. “Just don’t look him in the eyes- I think that’s what does it. Like Aomine said, it was like being under the control of a Gold.” 

As Sayuri gave Diego instructions on how to get to the JSDF, Aomine looked at his hands, streaked in blood from where he’d helped Diego get up. He then looked around at the office, and thought of the room where they’d found Takeshi.

Who knows what else was in this shitty third Teiko? 

_ I’ll get them out of here,  _ Aomine resolved to himself as Diego stood next to Takeshi, bouncing on his heels as Takeshi crouched down next to a power outlet, feeling along it until he pressed both hands against it.  _ That’s all I can focus on right now. _

“Ready?”

“Go there, give note with instructions, come back when Momoi-san breaks the field,” he said. “Yes!” 

Aomine tried to say something along the lines of ‘Don’t die’ or ‘Good luck’ but his throat was choked, and he just silently nodded at Diego, who looked determined. That face, at least, Aomine could recognize from his own expressions. 

_ He can do it. I just have to trust that he can.  _

Takeshi thumped his hands against the wall and said, “I think… now!” 

A flash of blue, and Diego was gone. 

\---

It was one thing for the tripwires to be triggered by something at the JSDF base. It was another thing for the DNA signature in their system to register that it was Aomine who was coming back.

“Thank fuck he’s back but where the hell is Sayuri?” asked Michiru, running to the front of the building with Youji.

“If he ran here and she drove to wherever he was, it’s possible she’s still on her way here,” said Youji, but Michiru still felt an anxious twinge in his gut as he spoke. 

Something was not right here. 

This was confirmed when Michiru threw open the doors and was faced with a blast from the past- a smaller Aomine, looking up at her frantically, his eyes wide. Aside from a large scar under his eye, he was the spitting image of Aomine at thirteen, and Michiru briefly wondered if there was some unfortunate time-travel bullshit that Teiko had come up with before remembering the earlier information from Sayuri. 

This must have been the second Aomine - or rather, some variation of Blue - that had been fighting Aomine. 

“What the fuck?” she muttered under her breath. “Don’t move, kid.” Although she knew that this boy could move faster than she could see, she said it anyway. Surprisingly, he stayed put, and immediately put his hands up in the air, one of which was clutching a piece of paper like his life depended on it.

Or, perhaps, other people’s lives depended on it. 

“This is really important, Aomine-sensei told me that I have to get this to - oh, it’s you guys!” he said, looking excited, and both Michiru and Youji startled. His voice, while the same timber as Aomine’s was at that age, was much lighter, not at all rough and acerbic. He bounced on his heels, and despite the clear anxiety on his face, he seemed less withdrawn and bitter than the Aomine they knew. He didn’t try to come in the doors but rather hovered outside, as if there was something blocking him from getting closer. 

“You’re Kasamatsu Youji and Sakurai Michiru,” said Diego, looking immensely pleased that he knew this. “I recognize you from the pictures in the news.”

“You’ve got a few seconds to explain why you’re here,” said Michiru, but still not reaching for her gun. She also felt safer with Youji at her side, considering she’d seen the damage he could do.

But they were Miracle Guardians, and their first instinct, while cautious, was to assume that this wasn’t a Project  _ sent _ by Teiko, but rather, escaped from there. And that’s the kind of child they wanted to help. 

"Um... can you call Nijimura Shuuzou please? I think you know him," said Diego, holding up his hands. "Tell him it's Diego Salinas, and that I'm sorry I didn't check in sooner but I have a good reason! You’ll probably trust him more than me.” 

"How do you know Nijimura-kun? And Aomine-kun?" asked Youji, now very confused but still alert. Michiru, however, was wondering why this kid called Aomine  _ Aomine-sensei _ instead of any other honorific. 

"Nijimura-san… is sort of my uncle?" said Diego. "Well, maybe dad? Probably uncle." 

"What the fuck," whispered Michiru under her breath again. "Youji, can you-"

"On it," said Youji, his phone already out. "Diego-kun, you can stay there, and don't move, please."

"Okay." He looked around the entrance to the JSDF at the adults staring him down, fidgeting uncomfortably. Michiru noticed that his eyes darted around at the various plants and small statues that decorated the outside of the front doors as if he wasn’t used to seeing ones like them before. 

The silence was incredibly awkward as the phone rang, and then a groggy, "Hello?" picked up. It echoed due to the speakerphone, and Diego perked up, smiling. Youji furrowed his brow and spoke into the phone clearly and firmly.

"Nijimura-kun, sorry to bother, but this is pretty important, I've got... ah, Diego Salinas here-"

"I'm so sorry, Tio!" yelped Diego. "I couldn't reach Ocean Mom and Mountain Mama, I was somewhere I couldn't use my phone, but I've got a situation going on and I need the JSDF's help!"

There was a large sigh on the other end of the line. "Diego, your mothers have been worried sick. As have the rest of us."

"I know, I know," said Diego, hands still up, clearly stressed. "But it was for a good reason!"

"I'm guessing it was," sighed Nijimura. There was some shuffling and then another voice, disgruntled and sleepy.

"Is this something I don't want to know about, Shuuzou?"

"Yep, I'll be a bit," said Nijimura, and then there was the sound of a closing door. "Youji, you can trust him. I can't tell you everything until I've talked to the others, but he's fine. No idea what this situation he's talking about is though."

"There are two Splices, Tala and Takeshi, trapped in the hands of some Teiko scientists, and then Aomine-sensei showed up, and then Imayoshi-san, and he needs Momoi-san to shut down the grid to break the field so we can get out!" said Diego rapidly, chest heaving as he said it quickly. He glanced around the room, and seemed stressed at its mere existence. 

Michiru and Youji were accustomed to surprises, being both soldiers and guardians of Miracles, but this was pushing it. However, they glanced over at each other and wordlessly agreed that perhaps rolling with it was the best solution. "Nijimura-kun, we can take it from here, if you vouch for Diego-kun," said Youji. "You can put your hands down, Diego-kun."

Diego did so, exhaling. "Whew! Okay. Thanks." He put his hands down and looked around. "I think Momoi-san needs to… um….," and he digs into his pockets after unzipping them, pulling out a crumpled sheet of paper. "One sec, reading kanji is hard." 

"That's Sayuri's handwriting, and then Aomine’s" said Michiru, squinting. "What could they possibly be asking for?"

Diego handed it over to her. She skimmed over it, and then gave it to Youji. "Text this over to Sacchan and figure out what the hell it is." 

"Got it." He snapped a picture on his phone and texted it over to Momoi. Then he frowned. “It says ‘I’m sorry’ at the bottom.”

“That’s not meant for you and me,” said Michiru quietly, and Youji raised an eyebrow.

“Now’s not the time to discuss all that but… well, nothing to be done about it anyway. That’s on them. In the meantime, do we need to send additional soldiers over? How far away is this happening?"

"It’s at a small mountain right outside Tokyo. I don't know if anyone else will get there in time - Aomine-sensei and Imayoshi-san said they could hold off the other scientist for now and save Tala- but we need that barrier broken for everyone to get out.”

Youji's phone buzzed, and Youji answered it swiftly. "She's calling- I'll be back." He walked away, saying, "I gave you all the info I had Sacchan- yes, I can read you the paper but I did text it to you-”

Michiru snorted and turned back to Diego. "He’s in way over his head, but he’ll get the info we need. Sacchan is - well it looks like she’s-”

"Oh I know,” said Diego, nodding. “I know what Pinks - er, former Pinks- can do. She should be able to hack into any satellite and do it, with the coordinates on this page. That’s how Aomine-sensei wrote it, with hopes that she could figure that out.”

"You even know - nevermind. You seem to know a lot more than a Project who escaped from Teiko who's been living on their own would know. Just tell me where you're from, kid," said Michiru, sighing. "I'm a Miracle Guardian myself. I've got your best interests in mind, if you're an escaped Project and Nijimura is vouching for you." 

He shook his head. "I can't- not until they all say it's okay. I wasn't even supposed to have met Aomine-sensei - well, we weren't ever supposed to have met in general but especially not now." 

"You're both cryptic and incredibly transparent and it's really annoying," said Michiru, and Diego laughed. Michiru jolted at the sight of goofy joy on the face of someone she knew very well and, yet, not at all.  _ Did Daiki ever look like that? Definitely not at that age, at least. He doesn't even smile all that much now.  _

"I'm sorry! I really am. But it'll make sense once I get permission to say things, I swear. But, ah, now that you're here, ah, thanks. For helping the Miracles. It means a lot to us."

"Us as in-" started Michiru, but Youji came back, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

“Satsuki-chan is working on it now. By the time you get back you can probably pass through.”

“We’re not done with our conversation yet,” said Michiru to Diego, who nodded enthusiastically. “We  _ will  _ be discussing this later. In fact, put these numbers in your phone right now.” If Sayuri couldn’t reach them for some reason, he’d at least have some way to contact them rather than running back and forth, no matter how fast he was. 

“Yes! Right, Sakurai-san! I need to tell this to -ah - people. Secret people. And then I have to go back. But I’ll tell you the secret later! When I am allowed! I’m sorry!” He zipped away, merely a blue blur as he ran. 

“I’ve also texted Kishitani-sensei to ready the med bay,” said Youji, mouth setting to a worried frown. “I don’t think whatever’s going on there is going to end pleasantly.”

“Good call. Also can I say, it’s really weird seeing someone who looks exactly like Daiki acting like this,” commented Michiru to Youji, who squinted at Diego as he typed away on his phone, and then bolted away, a flash of blue. 

“You don’t think they  _ all _ have little clones?” he asked musingly. 

“Don’t even speak that into existence.” 

\-----

_ “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” demanded Pink, cornering Blue in his bunk.  _

_ His bunk. Because he hadn’t been sleeping in her bunk, like they always had, since he was taken away one full day and then didn’t tell her what happened. He hadn’t been looking her in the eye either, and avoided touching her at all costs.  _

_ His arms were scratched deep, and she knew they had to be recent, because cuts usually healed rapidly, unless the wounds were made over and over. He wouldn’t scar, but it wasn’t good for him to be in so much pain.  _

_ “I don’t have to tell you everything,” he snapped. “Just like you aren’t telling me something.” _

_ She blanched.  _

_ The plan… they had been working so hard, her and Black, to make sure it went off without a hitch. Blue wasn’t supposed to be aware until the last second.  _

I’m doing this for you,  _ she thought desperately.  _ I’m keeping this a secret for you. 

_ “I’m not scratching up my arms over… my thing,” she huffed, and he pulled the blankets over his head, growling.  _

_ “Why do you give a shit what I do with my arms? They’ll heal anyway. It doesn’t matter.” _

_ “You’re in pain during it! I know you are! Let me-” she almost growled herself in frustration and reached out to snatch the blanket off, but he scrambled away, yelling. _

_ “Stop it! Fuck! Don’t you see I’m doing this for  _ you?!”

_ “Doing WHAT?” she yelled. She’d cut off security feeds to this section of the room, but other cameras down the hall were likely picking up their argument. She brought her voice down to a whisper-yell instead. “You aren’t DOING anything! You’re… NOT doing anything!” _

_ He stared at her, and for the first time in over a week, he met her gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, wrecked, and she was surprised to not only see anger on his face, but fear.  _

_ “You’re right,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m not doing anything. I swear I won’t. I’m not going to do anything.” And then in a flash of blue, he was gone.  _

\---

__

They had only made it a few minutes down the hall when there was a weird, shuddery sensation that rippled through his body. Aomine felt like someone had taken ahold of his veins and wriggled them violently, and he winced as the feeling passed. Sayuri hastily reached for her radio, but swore when she saw it was on the fritz still. “That must have been the barrier being taken down, but it’s going to take a while for my radio to adjust to whatever bullshit it went through going through it.”

Aomine breathed a sigh of relief. Of course Momoi did it so quickly and efficiently. He could always rely on her to bring him home. 

He promptly mentally slapped himself for having  _ feelings _ when they were in the middle of this garbage. This was a mission. He couldn’t afford to think about who was back home. 

“Stay here,” said Sayuri to Takeshi, giving him her phone. “If you hear anything, hide immediately unless you recognize it as any of us, okay? And once the phone works, text Diego where you are.”

Takeshi nodded and quietly went to a corner of the room. He glowed green as various items surrounded him in a blockade, some of them clumsily shaking as he did so.

As Aomine and Sayuri moved closer to where the blueprints had suggested the largest room was, supposedly a sort of warehouse space, he was starting to be concerned - not because he was hearing anything confrontational, but because he  _ wasn’t _ . 

A large metal door down the hall on their left was propped open, and only as he got closer could he hear the barest of murmurings. 

“Hmm, you’re a tricky one… I wasn’t sure you’d be able to hold this long. We’re matched at a stalemate, you and I, which stands to reason, Legacy was never as strong as Projects, even half-formed monsters like yourself. Perhaps it’s the Project you’re Spliced with… I never worked with GM-G1101 but I heard he was a terror to behold, the strongest Gold. Ah! You almost got me there, I think…” 

The voice sounded vaguely familiar to Aomine- the Blue scientist had had many assistants, and it was possible this was just one of them. 

Aomine made a move as if he was preparing to run in, but then realized that she might need some sort of heads up. He furrowed his brow and thought as loudly as possible,  _ Hey! We’re coming in in a second- brace yourself.  _

Aomine gave her a second and then sprinted in, knocking Koshi to the ground, tumbling away with him shutting his eyes tightly.  _ Don’t look at his face, don’t look at this face,  _ he thought as he wrestled the man to the ground. But there was a harsh, stinging pain across his leg, and he saw a damned prod in the corner of his eye. 

Aomine hissed as he rolled away, gripping his bloodied arm, curling in on himself as his consciousness flickered in and out.

__

\---

__

_ “Dai-chan,” said Momoi in a sing-song voice, kissing his cheeks and neck. They were lying prone on his bed, acutely aware that Shoichi, Shigure, Sayuri, and Michiru were out of the house. The house was quiet and still, and the warm spring air drifted in through the window.  _

_ Aomine’s restlessness caught up with him as he shifted his hands over Sayuri, never settling on one place. They both were in their school uniforms, and he felt overly warm in his, the shirt collar feeling like a noose around his neck. _

_ Should he take it off?  _

_ No.  _

_ No, that might imply- _

_ “No one else is here,” said Momoi mischievously as her fingers trailed up Aomine’s throat, and her voice had taken on a seductive quality that both thrilled and terrified him.  _

_ “I know,” said Aomine, who felt vague panic bubbling in his chest.  _

_ He had pretended like he was vulgarly into the rather mundane descriptions Kishitani-sensei had shown them during that ill-fated sex talk. He gladly participated in the lewd jokes and teasing with his team, and openly admired Satsuki’s body. But he was always adding a veneer of distance and crudeness to hide that sometimes, the thoughts of actually engaging with her in that way both thrilled and terrified him. _

_ He did enjoy on a surface level the magazines he had, but that was because they were safe. He couldn’t hurt anyone (her) with his thoughts about touching, taking, receiving. It was safer in his head, those impulses, urges, wants. _

_ From what he picked up from the scientists, what they were thinking, was that what he and she might do would be the worst hurt he could do to her. So why would she want to be hurt? But her fingers that danced across his jaw, the eagerness in her eyes,all the things that said that maybe she might be interested- _

You said you wouldn’t hurt her, you fuck,  _ snarled the scared animal of his mind.  _ You promised. You wouldn’t do anything. You’re playing right into what they want, even though Teiko’s gone. Some redeemed Miracle you are.

This isn’t for Teiko, _ thought another part of his mind. _ This is for us. We aren’t there anymore. It’s not the same. 

That’s a great thing to tell yourself to just get what you want, isn’t it,  _ growled the angry, terrified part of him.  _ Go on, treat her like a ‘mated pair’ and feel like shit after and then she’ll leave and that’s what you’ll deserve-

_ Her hand trailed down his chest, and she asked, “Dai-chan? Is this okay-” _

_ On instinct, he reached to scratch down his arms, feeling the blood rise to the surface, nervous, he was nervous, what was he  _ doing _ , what he was he  _ thinking _ , but she’s right there, she’s asking, but she doesn’t know, does she know, what they were trying to force you to do with their injections and constant pushing, of course she doesn’t know you never told her how could you tell her how they planned to hurt her make a kid to keep in that horrible place what would that do to her what would that do to him her no no he has to run he has to- _

__

\----

__

Seeing Aomine fall, Sayuri instinctively jerked to run towards him, but held back as she saw Koshi lunge and snatch Tala back. She tried to bite his arm, but he headlocked her, and raised the prod. However, Tala lunged and managed to land a bite on his hand and he dropped it, wrestling the tiny ferocious child with all his strength. 

“Not sure why you would go to such lengths to try to save this one, she doesn’t even work properly. A real waste of the Gold Miracle’s remains if you ask me,” said Koshi. Tala continued to fight him, beating her thin arms against him. “But if you both just leave here now, and never come back, I promise she’ll be fine.”

“He’s lying, he’ll do it anyway!” gasped Tala, and Koshi struck her across the face. Sayuri’s stomach rolled in rage and she broke out of her fugue to sprint over and pull Aomine out of the way. He struggled to sit up, and the gash on his leg was bleeding widely, but he managed to get up. He scowled at Koshi, but kept his eyes away, which reminded Sayuri to do so as well. Something about mind control, if what Diego said was right. 

_ Right. Legacy. Or whatever the fuck that’s all about.  _ Sayuri still didn’t have all the details from the briefings she’d got, but enough to know that they were people to be avoided, or at least, regarded with a fair amount of caution.

The ceiling shuddered, and Koshi looked up, frowning. “It’s collapsing? But that means someone turned off- oh.” He looked at Aomine. “Your Pink did it, didn’t she?”

“She’s not  _ my  _ Pink,” Aomine ground out, and he grit his teeth. “But yeah, she did fuck you over.” Despite the agony in his voice, she detected the smugness there. A Miracle getting one over on a Teiko scientist- definitely something she knew they’d all fantasized about at one point or another. 

Sayuri could see the gears turning in Aomine’s head on how to get them out when he couldn’t run. But then he looked over at her, and she realized, with a flutter of pride in her chest, he was looking to her for  _ help. _

Well. That’s leagues of improvement of someone who used to believe he wasn’t able to function on a team. Hell, he could even be a  _ good _ teammate beside one day, given his experience and instincts. 

Sayuri put aside thoughts of Aomine possibly teaming up with her in a more professional context (having someone like him at her back would make  _ so _ many missions leagues more efficient) and assessed the situation. They didn’t know when Diego was getting back. Takeshi was safe with access to the JSDF via phone if need be. Aomine wasn’t able to use his superspeed, likely, but he could still limp along. But as long as Koshi lived, he’d be a threat. 

And of course the ceiling was collapsing. Minor issue.

She instead met eyes with Aomine, who appeared to be thinking very rapidly, his eyes darting from her to Tala to Koshi and back again. His leg continued to bleed profusely, and that the prod, specifically meant to stop his rapid healing, had done its job- Aomine wasn’t running anywhere anytime soon. But that didn’t mean he was useless - just unable to escape. 

As long as she’d known him, his main intent, besides general assholery, had been protection. In the absence of his Generation, he shifted his needs to protect elsewhere. And without Momoi to project that onto, it landed on his adopted family, whether they were assigned to him like the Imayoshis or the Touou team, or they were randomly picked up off the street.

Or, you know, cloned from him.

So she knew before he even made the decision what he’d do. Of course he would. Whatever happened, he would stay behind until the last one of their own was out.

He would do this regardless of her approval. All in the name of saving her and now these kids because as much as he was an asshole, he still loved people, including her. Despite his best efforts not to give a shit. Despite his best efforts to not integrate into humanity. 

_ Do you think you have nothing to come back to? _ Thought Sayuri desperately, seeing the resolve on Aomine’s face.  _ Do you think just because you aren’t with her like that anymore that you don’t mean anything to her, or other people?  _

But now wasn’t the time to say that. She just had to hope that he did want to come back, and would do his best to do so.

“Meet me at the base when you’re done.” muttered Sayuri, knowing that Aomine’s enhanced hearing could pick it up, even at a whisper.  _ If you can make it there.  _ For now, her job was to destabilize Koshi, get Tala away from the base and the collapsing building, and hope that Aomine could take care of himself while making sure that Koshi didn’t get away in the process. And hope that Diego showed up at some point.

With that, she turned, raising her hands as if she was going to put them above her head in surrender, and then quickly pulled her gun out of her cleavage ( _ thanks, Michiru-obasan, for that trick) _ , and fired two rapidfire shots. One slammed into the Koshi’s wrist, causing him to jerk and cry out. The other struck his other elbow, as his hand was tucked in his pocket. She swore she saw a flash of blue in the corner of her eye but missed seeing if it was Diego returning or Aomine trying to run on his injured leg. Not like she had the time to turn around and look.

Tala grabbed this chance to snatch the gun from his pocket, but Sayuri ran over, swiping it out of her hand. “You can’t fire a gun, kid.”

“I just read your mind so now I know how to now, give it back, I can do it!” demanded Tala, hand outstretched. 

“ _ Bitch, _ ” snarled Koshi, cradling his wrist, and lunged at Tala. Sayuri struck him across the face, pistol-whipping him with gusto. He fell back, and Sayuri grabbed Tala. 

A streak of blue flashed past them, and Diego appeared, wrapping his arms around Tala. “I took Takeshi somewhere safe close by, and I’m taking you and Imayoshii-san too. Aomine-sensei just told me he’d get himself out. I’ll take you all there one by one but we have to get away from here now!”

“Are you sure you can carry me there?” demanded Sayuri, glancing at the warehouse. Aomine wanted to stay to make sure Koshi didn’t escape and it was entirely possible Aomine wasn’t going to make it out of this, but she doubted Aomine shared that information with his clone who clearly looked up to him in that intense, weird, ‘I’m your clone’ way. 

But that wasn’t her problem. Aomine, in the end, was making this decision for himself. 

Diego nodded, his dark blue eyes extremely wide and sincere. “Yeah! Trust me!”  _ Huh. Never seen that look on Daiki’s face before. Is this what he would have been like, had things been different? _

Not like she had a choice. 

Aomine leapt forward and pinned Koshi to the ground, and snapped at Sayuri, “ _ Go!”  _

One second later, she heard a sound as if the sky had split in half as the beams above them buckled and cracked.

__

\-----

__

Aomine was good at destroying things. Running into a situation, snapping a neck, running out. Maybe rigging a building according to Red’s instructions to self-destruct, or setting up a series of cars to crash into each other, moving too fast for them to save themselves. He had been very good at making things happen.

But that didn’t mean he actually was good at any of that planning. Or figuring out what to do if someone  _ else _ was doing the destroying. 

_ Blue Fives weren’t meant for strategizing. _

He slogged towards Koshi. Aomine had been so careful not to kill anyone in front of Diego, but even Diego had to have figured out that by trapping Koshi here, he was as good as dead.

Nothing Aomine could do about that now. Just another notch in his bloodied belt.

“What a good soldier you’ve made of that boy.” Aomine didn’t turn to look directly at Koshi as he pinned him to the ground, blood dripping out of his mouth, trying to pull himself up. Aomine darted his eyes away, making sure to avoid Koshi’s gaze as the man’s face twisted to see him. “Are all of you Miracles so arrogant as to want a little doppelganger? You two were never supposed to meet and yet you’re using him like a weapon.”

“Fuck off,” growled Aomine. “He’s nothing like me.”  _ And that’s for the best. _

Koshi looked up, having given up on trying to see Aomine’s face. “The beams are about to fall.” He stated it so calmly, as if he wasn’t about to die. 

Aomine tensed himself for what was to come next. “I hope what you built kills you,” he said simply, and hurled Koshi away from him, scrambling to back up against a wall where he might be protected from falling debris, but still be able to watch Koshi die, if not by his own hands. He just had to be sure.

The invisible threads that had held the barrier together snapped. Pieces began to fall, crashing to the concrete below. 

Aomine saw Koshi be crushed by a falling beam, and he barely had time to think  _ Good fucking riddance _ before the wall behind him shuddered and crashed into him, exacerbating his electric prod wound and smashing into his ribs.

_ Well. At least I got to stick around to watch him die.  _ He couldn’t have risked Koshi getting out - not with his powers, not with his intent to rebuild even a piece of Teiko. He felt the sense of satisfaction and purpose pulse through him, resting in his chest as he looked out at the falling debris. His leg twitched at his side, urging him to run, but he knew, as well as he knew all his bones, flesh, and ability, that he wouldn’t get very far. 

But then there was a scuffling, and he recognized those footsteps, he recognized them as well as his own. Because they were, of course they were, in a way.

In seconds, his world changed from hazy, fading black to blinding blue.

“Hold on! I’ve got you, don’t worry!”

And arms encircled his waist, where probably ribs had freshly broken, and held him tight. 

The pain was overwhelming. He thought of how it felt to be the one rescued ( _ odd _ ), and tried to remember the last time someone held him in their arms and told him not to worry. 

He really couldn’t.

He was being pulled along, faster and faster, until the blackness took him, sweetly and softly, to somewhere safe.


	3. Chapter 3

Youji watched as in rapid succession a young boy of about eight was dropped off at the base outside entrance, and then a girl of around eleven, and then Sayuri. Diego looked tired by the time he dropped Sayuri off, breathing heavily, but he determinedly wiped the sweat off of his face and ran out the doors again as Sayuri yelled out after him, “He’d better be alive!” 

“Why did Aomine-kun stay behind?” asked Youji, who had, for lack of other ways to prepare, started distributing snacks, which were a mixture of senbei packets and candy he’d found in his desk, to the two children, who he vaguely remembered Diego calling Tala and Takeshi. “Are you two alright?”

The two had clung to each other as Diego had left them, and once Sayuri arrived, they immediately latched onto her. Tala looked up from where she had been pressing her face into Sayuri’s back, and Youji startled at the familiar catlike gold eye staring at him, uneven with the equally fierce brown eye. She squinted at him, and then, as if she’d had something confirmed, reached out and took the packet, and then nudged Diego.

“It’s okay. We can eat this.” She tore the packet open for him and gave him some senbei, pressing them directly into his hands.

Takeshi, who had been curled up behind Tala when she arrived and then shifted to sticking close to Sayuri, tilted his face away from Sayuri’s legs as he ate. Youji noticed the bloodstains on the front of the blindfold for the first time, his stomach twisting.  _ His eyes,  _ he thought, horror gripping him in a chilling chokehold.  _ They took away his eyes.  _

Every time he thought he’d heard the worst of Teiko, it just kept going, and going. He didn’t even know if he’d heard everything awful that had to do with his own son and what he’d survived there. 

Michiru ran up with Kishitani. “Sayuri! Jesus, you scared the shit out of us!” 

“In my defense, it was Teiko so it was going to be a shitshow from the moment we got involved,” said Sayuri. “We’re just waiting on Daiki now.”

Michiru grimaced. “Speaking of Daiki…”

“We’re not getting into all of that right now,” said Sayuri firmly, and Youji watched this exchange with interest. He’d seen them bicker endlessly, but something had shifted in the air. They actually were on different sides about an issue. “But you should know, he was trying to come back earlier and didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” 

As Michiru opened her mouth to respond, there was a strong gust, and suddenly Diego was in front of them, holding a profusely bleeding and unconscious Aomine. The Miracle’s leg was gashed open, and it looked like he’d sustained a heavy blow to the torso.

“He’s alive, but we just need to get him rest so he can heal,” said Diego, glancing around as if he expected to find a bed to put Aomine down in. Or, somehow, that Aomine didn’t require a bed.

“We’ll take him to the med bay, we’ve got this from here, Diego-kun,” said Kishitani. “You haven’t met me yet but I’m a Guardian of a Miracle too, and a doctor on base. I’ve cared for Aomine-kun before. He’ll be alright.”

“Med bay?” asked Diego, and he looked for a second vaguely panicked. “What - what are you going to do to him?” He held Aomine tighter to his chest. “Are you a scientist?”

Youji rather quickly realized what a probably not-ideal situation they were in. True, Nijimura had told them Diego was safe, but given this kid had clearly been from Teiko at some point in his life - he was a literal clone, it seemed - he still might be harboring fear towards anything militaristic or scientific. Which meant that it was entirely possible he was not going to hand Aomine over, even if that was what was actually best for him. 

“No, I’m a doctor, I promise,” said Kishitani gently. “I’ve treated him before- not that he needed it often, but it looks like that wound isn’t healing the way it normally would. I’ll need to look into that.” 

“Is the med bay… inside the building?” asked Diego, glancing at the JSDF structure with worry. 

“It is,” said Kishitani, and Youji had to give him credit - he was not acting as if these questions were incredibly odd or unsettling. Then again, as a Miracle Guardian, he had probably answered a host of utterly bizarre questions at this point. “He’s been in there before. Aomine-kun lived here for three years before he moved in with the Imayoshis. He’ll be alright in there, but we do need to move fast to make sure his wounds don’t get infected or he didn’t sustain any organ damage.”

Diego looked incredibly torn, and then glanced over at Sayuri, who said, “You gotta do it, Tiny Daiki. I know it sucks but you gotta do it.” 

Steeling himself as if he was walking into an active war zone, Diego asked Kishitani, “Okay. Show me where?” 

Kishitani turned and headed into the building, setting off at a fast pace (for a non-Blue, anyhow) as Diego cautiously trailed behind. Sayuri nudged the kids along, and they clung to her, Tala looking cautiously at every door they passed. Their little hands squeezed her clothes, which were a ripped mess, as she led them inside. 

“Do  _ you  _ need any medical help?” asked Michiru, who still looked like she had a lot to say but was holding herself back as she walked alongside Sayuri with Youji, glancing down at the kids who were whispering to each other, glancing occasionally up at Sayuri as if to reassure themselves that she was actually there.

“Give or take some bruises I’m mostly fine,” she said, “But I want to get these guys checked out. Especially this one,” and with that she ruffled Takeshi’s hair. He tilted his head into the touch and kept walking alongside her. 

They entered the med bay where Diego laid Aomine on the bed, and hovered anxiously. He darted his eyes around the walls of the room which Youji had always thought of as spacious. Admittedly he had rarely been the one in the beds here, given how he never took much time to heal or had ever sustained any truly grievous injuries. 

“So what are you-” Diego started to say but was cut off by a violent shiver, and flashed blue for a second, causing Kishitani to look at him with alarm. “Um, ignore that. What are you going to do to him?”

“I’m going to put him under a sedation so he doesn’t wake up when I’m stitching him,” said Kishitani calmly as he reached for a tray he’d set up, clearly in anticipation for whatever came out of Aomine’s misadventure. 

Diego startled and reached out to Aomine, gripping his arm. “Sedation? But that means he can’t wake up if he wants to.” He looked as if he was about to pull Aomine away from the bed, his eyes very wide and frightened. 

“Diego, you have to let Kishitani-sensei do his work,” said Sayuri firmly. “If Daiki were awake he’d tell you the same thing, except he’d be bitching a lot more, probably.”

“What if he-” but then Diego shook his head, and glowed blue all over again, and then dug his fingers into his arms, scraping down them. Youji noticed with alarm that he’d managed to draw blood, his nails cutting into his skin.

“Diego-kun,” said Kishitani, his voice very stern in the way that Youji had only heard him use with angry, yelling privates who were too scared to make his job easy. It was not unkind, however, but firm. “There’s a courtyard down the hall to the left. Youji will show you there. You want out of this room, don’t you?”

“You promise to not hurt him?” blurted out Diego, who was really doing a number on his arms, but stood his ground regardless.

“As I told you earlier, my son is also a Miracle,” said Kishitani, infusing his voice with the sort of calm used for patients on the brink. “I would treat them both the same. I only want the best for Aomine-kun, do you understand?” 

Diego nodded, and then took off down the hall in a burst of blue, and Youji sprinted after him, hoping that the kid didn’t run through a wall or something. 

It seemed that Diego found the courtyard on his own, and was standing, looking up at the sky, no longer scratching at his arms when Youji found him. “I’m sorry,” said Diego, looking up at Youji. “You don’t think I’m a coward or anything do you? It’s just really hard for me in there.”

“Are you claustrophobic?” asked Youji, who had started to piece it together from all of his interactions with Diego.

Diego nodded miserably. “I’m working on it, I swear. I want to be able to be inside buildings, and be with people, and I don’t know, have a nice little house with - someone, someday, and sleep in the same bed as him, but I can’t do that yet. I can’t. I’m trying though.”

Youji had sometimes felt he had failed as a father- not because his kids were terrible (if anything, they were a testament to their own greatness with how they’d pulled through his various failures in parenting) but he did feel he had some experience he could use to his advantage here here.

“I’m really sorry,” said Diego apologetically, taking Youji’s silence to be something akin to judgement. “I can’t- I wish I could control it better but after- after how long I was locked up-”

“It’s quite alright, Diego,” said Youji, awkwardly patting Diego on the shoulder. However, Diego leaned happily into it, something that Youji filed away for later.  _ Receptive to touch _ . “Everyone has their quirks.”

They stayed there for another few minutes as Diego’s breathing regulated itself, and he looked far less pale than he had before. True to how Youji had often seen Aomine heal from small injuries, his arms smoothed over once more, only slightly stained with dried blood. 

“Well, it’s how my….” Diego frowned and sought out the words, “PTSD manifests itself? Is that right?”

“Oh so you know about that,” said Youji, mildly surprised. “They talk about that- ah - your home?”

Diego nodded. “Yep! I looked up some stuff on my own too. It’s important to know about. Especially for those of us who were actually- oh  _ no _ you didn’t hear that.”

Sayuri, Michiru, and the children came in at that moment. They were now holding more snacks, which was probably from Kishitani’s stash. Seaweed snacks and fruit were definitely not from Michiru’s snack stash, anyway. 

Sayuri rolled her eyes. “Diego, you’d make the worst spy.”

“I know,” he said cheerfully, his color coming back a bit now that he was outside. As if in a single motion in unison, the children shifted from Sayuri to Diego, clustering close to him, and he smiled and hugged them both. 

It was  _ extremely _ odd seeing someone who looked like Aomine willingly hug someone else. 

“Okay, so, from the top,” said Youji, who looked down at the two children clinging to Diego - one perched on his shoulders, the other comfortably sitting and holding his legs. “Names and… any other information you can give me, please. I’ll start. As you know, I’m Kasamatsu Youji, a sergeant at the JSDF. I’m the father to Kise Ryouta, who you probably know as one of the Miracles.”

“Diego Salinas, from - uh, can’t tell you yet,” said Diego, somewhat embarrassed. “But you will! Once Nijimura-san talks to - uh, my - person?”

“You are really bad at this,” Sayuri informed Diego. “Just so you know.”

“I wasn’t encouraged to lie growing up,” he said, frowning. “So isn’t it good I’m bad at this?” 

“To be fair, Daiki also sucks at lying, so maybe it’s genetic,” said Michiru thoughtfully. 

“Does he?” asked Diego, wide eyed. “Wow. That’s cool.”

“And you are Takeshi-kun, right?” asked Youji kindly, crouching down to be eye-to-blindfold to the one hugging Diego’s leg. 

“Takeshi… um, that’s it,” said the boy, shrinking slightly behind Diego’s leg. “That’s all I can remember. And I’m not even sure that’s real. But I do know I’m a younger brother. And a Green Heart, Pink Mind.” He looked up at Tala, who nodded. 

“I’m Tala, and I’m an older sister. And that’s all I remember,” she said, and Youji suppressed a chill as she stared intensely at him. “And I’m a Gold Mind and Eye Splice.”

“Gold Mind and Eye, you say?” asked Youji, and Tala continued to look at him piercingly but not angrily. It was as if she didn’t know how to look other than with all of her attention. That said, given how many of the Second Teiko Splices were after their escape, both of these children seemed relatively stable. Much like how Mihashi and Tajima kept each other balanced as they worked to recover, perhaps. 

“From GM-G1101. I also have his memories,” she said. She looked thoughtfully at Diego. “The scientist… the Rainbow Splice. I killed him, before, didn’t I? Gold?” 

Youji exhaled sharply, and Michiru mouthed to him,  _ We need a Miracle. _ If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have laughed at the ridiculous play on words. 

But she was right - someone with more background on the situation would help. He mouthed,  _ Satsuki-chan _ back at her, and Michiru nodded, taking out her phone. From what Youji had gathered from her texts, Momoi had more computers in her room to help out with the situation from there rather than on base, but right now, with these kids here, they needed her to guide them as a bridge between the world of Teiko and the real world. It seemed that her job with the breaking of the force field was done, and she was far more needed here. 

All of the Miracles had gathered in Tokyo to help Satsuki through her “breakup” (the status of that was, frankly, unclear) and had been waiting for Aomine to come back, but Youji hadn’t made the call to bring them all back to the base yet. It was probably time now, though. 

“I think so,” Diego said carefully. “GM-R1391. Do you remember that? He was the Rainbow Miracle. We all heard about it the day it happened.”

Tala nodded. “Right. Think I… think I split him open on the table. Didn’t I? Or, I guess- didn’t he? Gold did. Right in front of everyone. To prove a point that other Projects couldn’t hurt Miracles with consequence.”

“That’s what I heard,” said Diego softly, and Youji felt he had to step in.

“Tala-chan, you’re right that you have memories of Gold,” said Youji carefully. “And those can be very strong- I’ve worked with other children from the Second Teiko who have memories like that. But that’s not you - you’re someone else.”

“Right, I’m Tala, and an older sister,” she said confidently, and Youji felt slightly more at ease than that, because that was at least an identity that didn’t pose any harm. And then she said, with the same confidence, “And your intent is to protect.”

“My what?” asked Youji, mildly stunned. 

“Your intent,” said Tala, nodding. She pointed at Kishitani, who had just come in, gloves on his hands and a mask still on his face. “Intent to protect.” And then Michiru. “Intent to learn.” 

“She can do that because of the Gold Mind,” added Diego helpfully.

“I see,” said Youji, not understanding at all. “The Gold Splice I know doesn’t quite… work this way.” 

“GM-G1101 was a Success,” said Tala, and her voice took on a slightly different tone, as if she was reading from a book. “He was able to seek out what he was looking for in a mind without hearing all of the rest. Like people’s intent. Intent to harm. Intent to deceive. Intent to take control. Intent to learn. Intent to protect.” 

“What a delightfully messed up personality quiz,” said Sayuri in the silence that followed Tala’s statement. 

“Intent to learn,” Tala added, nodding in Sayuri’s direction. 

“See, Michiru-obasan? It runs in the family.” 

“I cannot  _ wait _ to see what she labels Masaomi,” said Michiru as Youji rolled his eyes, and then paused.

“Youji-san, his eyes… do you think…” Kishitani said thoughtfully, looking at Takeshi with concern.

“Masa-chan… I bet he could help.” Youji pulled out his phone and tapped the screen a few times.

“Oh Youji, darling, I was thinking the  _ filthiest _ thoughts about you,” purred Masaomi on speakerphone, and Youji groaned as Michiru snickered loudly. 

“Masa-chan you’re on speakerphone and there are literal children listening,” sighed Youji. “Rein it in for like… thirty seconds, please.” 

“Why are there  _ children _ around you? Did you just pick them up off the street?” 

Youji frowned, unsure of how to actually answer, and Masaomi gasped, horrified. “Oh my god you _ did _ didn’t you?”

“Technically, Aomine-kun found them,” said Youji, and he could practically hear the gears turning in his partner’s head, despite the miles between them. 

“They’re Teiko, aren’t they?” 

“Get this- one of them is a literal clone of my nephew,” said Michiru. “Just when you thought that place couldn’t get any weirder.”

“You have a  _ clone  _ there?” Masaomi’s voice had gone from playful to business. “How many are there?”

“Two Splices and the clone,” said Youji, for a lack of better word. “Listen, Masa-chan, one of them…. They removed his eyes. But he’s a Pink Splice. Is there something you could-”

“Easily,” said Masaomi firmly. “Give me two hours to get to you and I’ll have something for him. You’re at the base?” 

Youji confirmed, and Masaomi quickly hung up, muttering something about LCD screens and multiple interfaces. He did not bother to track that as he turned to the children, sliding his phone in his pocket. “Takeshi, someone’s coming soon to help - I think he’s making you something that’ll help you see again. He’s… an inventor?”  _ Don’t think I should really go into everything he is.  _

“He’s insane but sure let’s go with that,” said Michiru, rolling her eyes. 

“Is that your boyfriend?” asked Diego. “Are you gay?” 

“Bisexual,” said Youji, who was unused to this sort of direct questioning from someone who looked so much like Aomine, who couldn’t give a shit what Youji’s sexuality was. “And sure, let’s go with that.”

“Wow,” breathed out Diego. “Is it nice? How did you two meet? Do you hold hands?” 

“As much as I would love to get into the weirdness of how all that went down,” said Michiru loudly as Youji tried to figure out how to answer without actually answering, “We need a plan for where we’re going to host these little guys - we’re getting close to nightfall. I’d rather not keep them to the barracks, not if we can keep them at someone’s home that’s a bit more welcoming. Tiny Daiki, you can come with us, you can take Daiki’s room while he’s here at the med ward.”

“Um, I can’t do a room,” said Diego apologetically, scratching lightly at his arms. “But I love sleeping on roofs! And I don’t even sleep that long, so I won’t be a bother.” 

“Oh so the roof thing is genetic,” mused Sayuri. “Kishitani-sensei, you’ve got a kid about Tala-chan’s age, don’t you? Do you have space for the other two?” 

Kishitani nodded. “I do, yes. How does that sound, Tala-chan, Takeshi-kun?”

Thoughtfully gnawing on her fingernails, Tala looked between the adults, and then nodded, satisfied. “Good intent. Yes.”

Diego looked at them anxiously. “We’re splitting up? But I have to protect them.”

“Who told you that you did?” asked Youji, mildly curious.

“Er? No one? I just… need to,” said Diego, and he sort of shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. But if I knew where the two houses were in relation to each other, I could run between them to make sure they were safe.” 

“We can put both addresses in your phone, Diego-kun,” said Youji reassuringly. “You’ll just need to let us know if you leave one house or the other so we know where you are, alright?” 

Diego nodded, and then jolted as his phone began to ring, someone shouting in Spanish over and over, and then trailing off and laughing. Diego grinned as he reached to open the call, and then said, “Oh! Tío! That’s for you, probably.” Diego handed his phone over to Youji.

“Kasamatsu-san,” said Nijimura. “I hope you’re ready for your day to get a whole lot weirder. I’ve got someone on the line for you all.” 

\---

_ “GM-B599, you’re being asked a question. Answer,” commanded the voice, stern and completely lacking in empathy. If Blue didn’t already know it was spoken by a human, he’d have guessed it was a good automated computer voice.  _

_ “I don’t know what you want,” said Blue, and he tried to move his legs again, and hissed.  _

_ Fuck. They’d really broken them this time. Damn prod, breaking him in ways he hadn’t thought he could be broken. He almost wished they had thrown him in Room 101 rather than this. At least in there, he could run in circles as he screamed.  _

_ Now, he was just unable to move anywhere, and forced to lie there, gritting his teeth against the pain, unable to sleep, unable to see anyone else as they’d kept him away from his Generation.  _

Pink, Pink, Pink, is she okay, why can’t I see her, Pink, is this my punishment for trying to keep you safe from myself?  _ thought Blue, his mind hazy and frenetic, unable to fully form a thought without spinning violently to the next one.  _

_ “Why did you try to run away? Are you that eager to abandon your charges?” asked the scientist. “Is your protection drive that low? Such a disappointment. A Failure to your Generation.” _

My protection drive is fine, it’s too good, that’s why I had to run away _ , thought Blue miserably as he curled up, his nails dragging up and down his arms as he tried not to go crazy. His useless legs spasmed, and he howled in pain, the anger and fear bubbling up in his chest.  _

_ The scientist hummed, a nearly human action from an inhuman man. He tapped his tablet a few times with his fingers. Click, click, click. “Curious,” he said. “Very curious.”  _

_ With that, he turned and left Blue alone on the floor, not even bothering to close the door behind him. _

_ After all, where would Blue go? _

\---

Blearily opening his eyes, Aomine became slowly aware that he was back at the base. He knew the scent of it, the feel in the air. While he hadn't spent a lot of time in the medical spaces, he still could recognize the overlay of harsh chemical cleaning scent and that very specific hospital soap smell. There were warm weights on his legs, as well as something pressing against his stomach. 

He also, even without opening his eyes, could tell there were at least two very intense pairs of eyes on him, and another intense sensation of focus, given the extremely light pattering sensation on his face. 

"I'm alive, you all can stop worrying. Diego, you should know that the most," said Aomine, exhausted, trying to sit up. His ribs had healed, and he expected a dull ache that came after healing, but it simply wasn't there. "How long have I been out?" He opened his eyes, and sure enough, Tala, Takeshi, and Diego were all focused on him. Tala and Takeshi were sitting on the bed itself, on his legs which explained the weight, as well as Takeshi leaning on his stomach with his elbows.  _ These kids have no idea about personal space apparently.  _ Not that he was moving them or anything. He apparently had developed that much of a fucking soft spot for these kids, even though he had only known them briefly.  _ Must be that protection drive that bullshit scientist talked about.  _

"A few hours. I think they put you under a big sedation, since you’d metabolize anything less so quickly." Diego looked extremely anxious at the thought. "But Kishitani-sensei said it was okay and so did everyone else. The sedation."

"Yeah, it's fine. They probably didn't want me moving around," muttered Aomine as he started to assess the state of his body. There was the general ache of not moving for a few days, but he suspected they'd knocked him out so he would fully have recovered before trying to move at all. But given how nervous Diego seemed about the sedation he wasn't going to give any impression it was against his will.  _ Let's add that to the ‘Diego trauma box’ that I'm figuring out.  _ "Where's-"

"Daiki! Fuck you!" snapped Sayuri as she stalked into the room. "Also thank God you're alive. You scared the shit out of me."

"I did what I’d said I’d do, didn't I?" grumbled Aomine. "And I'm not dead."

"That wasn't certain," said Sayuri, and Aomine was glad to see, despite the last time he saw her, she seemed unharmed. "But we sent a team back and did some recon in the time you were out, looks like the entire place is wiped to the ground, so at least no one can try to use the facility again. And we found both bodies, so, that's done with." 

Aomine nodded numbly. 

"We’ve got people clearing up the site now," said Sayuri. "Everyone wants to talk to you, but I thought it'd be overwhelming, probably, so I told them to hold off, except for Kishitani-sensei." 

Aomine thought of everyone who might be waiting outside. And then, more specifically, one of them waiting. Or maybe they weren't. He didn’t expect her to be waiting. Did he  _ want  _ her to be waiting?

He wasn’t sure.

"She's there," said Sayuri flatly. “But you’re going to want to be in the room for what’s happening next, even though she’s there too. Diego’s mom is on the line.”

Aomine sat up quickly. “You’re serious?” 

“Yep, so either you stay in here and hide, which I don’t really blame you for given everything, or you get to figure out along with the rest of us what the hell is going on,” she said, shrugging.

She was offering actual choices. But only one of them was viable to him. 

Aomine threw off the covers and got up, noting with mild amusement as the children tumbled off the bed and followed him. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

\---

Momoi had imagined how she would act when she saw Aomine for the first time since that awful moment in the parking lot. She touched her fingers to the freshly shorn part of her hair, feeling the asymmetry beneath her hands. How odd, that he hadn’t seen her like this yet. She thought she’d look cool, like she’d done some work in moving on.

But no, it still sent a spark of adrenaline through her as she saw Aomine come in, and thought,  _ I’m sorry, I want to talk, are you okay, they said you were so banged up.  _ But she said nothing, letting others talk first. 

“Hey, you’re not dead!” cried Kise as Aomine walked into the room, one child comically perched on his shoulders, the other holding Aomine’s hand. And trailing behind him was a near-perfect copy of Aomine at thirteen, except for a scar under his eye. “And… holy shit you  _ do _ have kids.”

“Don’t swear in front of the fucking children,” said Sayuri, and Diego giggled, covering his mouth as he grinned. 

And then Diego startled and said, “Oh! It’s you!”, pointing at Midorima, who looked bemused. “You took the bullet away from me, as everyone was breaking out. You probably don’t remember. You were really busy.”

Midorima shook his head rapidly. “No, no, I do not remember... I apologize however, it seems I was not… fast enough to stop it fully.”

“Nah, it’s okay! Abun says the scar makes me look dashing,” said Diego with a wide grin, and Midorima, for lack of how he could possibly respond, merely nodded, mutely. 

Momoi stared at Diego with shock, and while she had been warned that yes, Aomine has a clone, it was bizarre to actually see it. They’d been briefed by Youji, who seemed himself still stunned by everything, but it didn’t even feel real until they were all in her face. 

Her brain itched in that way that it did when she knew information was forthcoming, but wasn’t available to her yet. They’d all been told there would be a conference call with Diego’s -  _ mother? _ \- but that wasn’t for another few minutes, so they had just been waiting. Waiting to see if Aomine would join them. Waiting to see what these rumored kids and clone were actually like. Waiting to know how she felt when actually confronted with it all. 

Youji had given her the note that Aomine and Sayuri had written on. Her thumb had smoothed over the “I’m sorry” many times. She wondered if he had written it as an opening to a new conversation, or as a goodbye. Given what Youji had told them about their situation at the mountain, it could have easily been the second option. 

_ I don’t have the answer for how I should have done that conversation,  _ she thought as she watched the others approach Aomine and the kids.  _ There wasn’t any good way to approach it. I don’t even blame you now, for running away. And now that I know you were caught and couldn’t come back right away, maybe we could actually talk…  _

“Momoi-san?” 

The voice startled her, because she hadn’t heard it in years. “Ah - yes?”

The clone -  _ Diego,  _ she reminded herself - walked up to her as Aomine half-assedly answered questions about what happened from the other Miracles, the children now clinging to his legs. “You probably know this, but I’m Diego Salinas.” He looked uncomfortable, but she got the feeling it wasn’t due to her. She noticed that his eyes darted around the room, as if looking for an exit. 

“You’re safe in here,” she said, immediately going for the reassuring route. “The JSDF was really wonderful to us when we broke out.”

“I know,” he said, and smiled sadly. “I just can’t be in enclosed spaces for very long. It’s because they put me in storage- well, I’m not sure you’d know about that. It was off the record.” 

_ Off the record?  _ She’d only heard of that concept as a rumor, as everything was meticulously documented at Teiko. That’s how she got all of the information she had before, due to the scientists’ need to write everything down and analyze it. “I never heard of anything off the record,” she said, stunned, and then felt immediately stupid.  _ Of course you wouldn’t have. It was literally off the record.  _

She tried to meet Aomine’s eyes, but he steadfastly avoided them, and instead said to Diego, “Is there a- I mean, are there other Miracle clones?” 

“That lived? Just the Pink - they’re called Nao,” he said. “But um, don’t expect to meet them anytime soon. They’re pretty camera shy.”

“They?” said Momoi, tilting her head. 

“They’re agender. They sort of realized it after they escaped from Teiko,” said Diego, and then frowned. “Did I translate that right?”

“You did,” she quickly assured him, now wondering what this Nao could possibly look like. If agender, possibly nothing like her. Which honestly might make possibly meeting them one day easier than probably when Aomine had met Diego. Looking into a small, time-warped mirror would be fairly painful, she’d think. And judging by how Aomine was looking at Diego out of the corner of his eye, there was so much still processing there. 

She wondered how much of their conversation was on his mind, or if it was entirely blacked out by all of this mess. She honestly couldn’t blame him if it was. 

“Diego, we’ll be in the conference room with the Miracles and some of the guardians,” said Youji, and Diego turned back to him. “Colonel Kobayashi will be watching you all in the courtyard and we’ll let him know when we’re done, alright?” 

Diego nodded quickly, and faced Momoi again. “I know you all have a lot of questions, but I can answer any you have left after my Mom talks to you all first.”

“Of course, Diego,” said Momoi, and awkwardly reached out and patted his head, the way that she sometimes did to Ryou. 

He smiled, happily leaning into the touch, and then darted back to Tala and Takeshi. Momoi saw Kobayashi ushering them back into the courtyard.

“Youji-san,” started Kise, but Youji held up a hand.

“We’re about to get a lot more information, so hold your questions until the end,” he said, looking extremely tired. “Needless to say, this is a lot, for some of us more than others.” It was then that Momoi had noticed Akashi’s eyes were red-gold instead of the usual red-red for a moment before flashing back, and then thought-  _ oh. The girl.  _

She’d had Gold’s eye, hadn’t she? But Momoi had been too wrapped up in seeing Diego and Aomine, side by side, to fully process anything else. She hoped that Akashi as they knew him would stay, at least for the moment, as they sorted all this out. 

“So we’re going to go in there, and,” Youji shrugged. “Well, I am going to try not to break down. You all are welcome to join me in that endeavor.” 

Momoi looked over at Aomine, who had his set, determined face on, like he did before particularly tough matchups at basketball. She wondered who he thought he was facing off against. 

She wondered what he thought he had to lose if it didn’t go well. 

They filtered into the room, and by chance, Momoi was directly behind Aomine. She could tell by his gait he was slightly off- possibly still recovering from the heavy sedation. 

“How do you feel?” she blurted out, and he nearly stopped walking in what Momoi assumed was shock. 

However, the brief pause didn’t cause a pile-up, and Aomine responded, without looking at her, “Fine. I heal fast.” There was a beat, and then he said, tone slightly defensive, “I don’t have an answer for you, okay?” 

“Yeah, that’s- that’s okay,” she stammered, and she had a thousand other things to say, but then she looked up and saw a Rainbow on the screen, and barely remembered choosing a random seat as she sank down, wondering what could possibly come now. 

\---

It was, hands down, the weirdest fucking video conference call Youji had ever been a part of. 

"So... Rainbow Village," said Youji, haltingly. "You're joking, right?"

"If you think Nijimura is creative enough to make this all up on his own, you're wrong," said Nijimura Kazusa. She, eerily, looked just like a female Shuuzou, and Youji kept fixating on that because what the hell else could he possibly fixate on right now that wouldn't crack his mind in half? "Also the name was meant to be a placeholder but now it's stuck and will never change, unfortunately."

"Thanks for that kind commentary, Kazusa," said Shuuzou, sounding pleasantly exasperated. "If it helps, the kids love it.”

"Of course they do. It sounds like we live in a cartoon," replied Kazusa wearily.

“Anyhow, now that you two are here, I need to go,” said Shuuzou, and he gave a short wave. “Keep me updated on whatever else goes on. You know where to find me.”

Kazusa nodded as Shuuzou disappeared from the screen. She then turned away from the camera. "Nao! Can you get Abun and Teresa?" She turned back to the screen. "They're three of the four Core older kids. We let them know about stuff like this before the rest of the children, since they have significant responsibilities and we want to give them respect to match their responsibilities. They were in the first real meeting rundown with Shuuzou. You, obviously, have our fourth one." 

The Miracles sat very still in the desks in the conference room facing the forward projector where her face was on display. They had been very quiet during this, Youji noted. He knew the guilt of leaving the first Teiko, and its unwilling inhabitants, weighed on them immensely.

Youji watched their faces closely. Some, like Akashi, schooled their faces well. Others, like Momoi, let her emotions show clearly. But on some level, he could tell that all of them were reeling. They were now faced with the knowledge that not only a significant number of them survived, but there was one they'd met, and they were now meeting more. 

And he was feeling unsettled too. After all, he saw the bodies left behind. A few hours, and he could have saved more. He just never had imagined there would have been  _ any _ saved that weren't Miracle. 

"Speaking of Diego," said Youji, not even sure where to start with all this but deciding to at least address what he knows something vaguely about, "Why did he come to Japan? Away from his..."

"Family," supplied Kazusa. "Family, or Village. He has a family unit, and the Village is everyone as a whole. I’m one of his mothers." Kasuza sighed. "We put a lot of responsibility on our Core kids. On their abilities, on their maturity, and how they have been cornerstones in this entire Village. When Diego expressed interest in returning to Japan to get to know his Japanese roots, we worked it out that he could go and explore for some time, as long as he checked in with us via phone daily. The other three Core kids have been holding down the fort in his absence, taking over his responsibilities, like his patrols and childcare."

"You make kids do your work for you?" asked Aomine flatly, glaring up at her. 

"If you think I don't already feel terrible for having to rely on our children for help, you can be rest assured, it keeps me up more nights than not," said Kasuza coolly. "The fact that Abun has had a gun in his hand since he was five has fucked me up more than anything Teiko did to me. And I wasn’t even here then to make that decision. The fact that he still carries it on patrols is something I have to live with." 

Youji waited for Aomine to make another comment, but he didn't. 

"When the first Rainbow arrived here with the smuggled kids, she realized she couldn't defend them on her own, nor the children of the Mexican woman she'd met who was escaping her abusive husband. So while Juana and Azusa started making Rainbow Village, they had to arm themselves too, and eventually, their children, and all of the kids that were smuggled here from Teiko. Because the only reason we're able to exist out here is that it's supposed to be virtually uninhabitable, and if drug cartels try to screw with us, they get a nasty surprise. So, yes, in order to defend ourselves, some of our kids use weapons, or their natural abilities. Because we asked them. Now that we're more built up, we only have a few of the children doing patrols, all volunteer. But we had no choice in the beginning."

"But they don't refuse if asked," said Momoi, her eyes very bright with emotion. "Because they're loyal to you. And they want to help. They want to protect what they consider theirs." 

Kazusa's mouth twisted, frustrated. "Yes. I know that. We know that. Don't think I don't feel like shit that we know what that responsibility does to them, and that they once have responsibility like that, they're irrevocably changed. Because we couldn't be good enough parents."

Youji tries not to let that murder him.

(It does anyway.)

"Rainbows have no natural offense other than some of the basic martial arts training," said Midorima, his voice flat. "Therefore, had you died, you would have left the children defenseless. Therefore, you had no choice but to raise them to aid you. It is an understandable decision."

"Doesn't mean I haven't asked them constantly if they want to stop. In fact, Diego asking to do this was one of the first big things he'd ever asked for, which is why we gave it to him immediately. He wanted to take Abun with him, but they understood we couldn't leave the Village so undefended. They took on defense responsibilities so the others wouldn't have to learn so young."

"Really great sacrificial little lambs they are," growled Aomine.

"You're removing their agency," commented Kuroko coolly to Aomine.

"They don't have agency! What happens if they refuse?" snapped Aomine. "Did we have agency at Teiko? Even if they're told they won't get punished there, how the hell would they know that? The place is run by fucking  _ Rainbows. _ "

"They have the option to refuse, and others have, but the Core four has not," said Kazusa, her voice steady. "You're welcome to ask Diego for details on everything."

"Yeah, he thinks the sun shines out your asses, but it's easy to think that when you've only known Teiko," snarled Aomine. Youji could tell he felt like lashing out, like there had to be some hidden darkness that was going to hurt Diego and leave him to be a mess the way Aomine was. It was a little too close to home for Youji to watch.

"I wouldn't know any other life either," said Kasuza, still surprisingly calm in the face of Aomine's wrath. "I went from being a prison guard to a parent the first second those alarms went off and we started to run." 

There was a brief silence as Aomine stared up intensely at the screen, and Kasuza looked on, her face set tightly. Youji stepped in, because he probably let this get out of hand already. He had to get out of his head and own issues for a second, because otherwise they were going to get cut off from this Rainbow Village entirely. 

And he wanted to see the kids that had been rescued. How many were there? Ones that didn't become corpses he had to carry and then bury? 

"How many kids are there?" asked Youji. "And how many.... parents?"  _ Parents. These kids had parents. Jesus Christ.  _

"We currently have seventy-six children rescued from Teiko, and sixteen Mexican-born children. They came from - well, we call them Mountain Mothers, native Mexican women who joined us by chance after running away from abusive situations or were thrown out by their families. Without them, I don't think any of us other Rainbows would have done well at parenting at all." Kasuza ran her fingers through her hair, looking up in thought. 

"We... there were eighty Teiko rescues, in total. Two died from accidents involving their powers, a Brown and a Purple. And two... two were suicides. Both Golds." Her face grew tense, and she lowered her eyes to meet the camera again. "We can't save them all from themselves, and I tried. I really fucking did. But they carried with them their trauma from Teiko, and when we reached out they read our own issues in our minds, and in the end, it was too much for them. We did our best and it wasn't enough. And I think about that every day."

Aomine didn't say anything to this, and Youji was grateful, because he understood. He understood too well what it felt like to fail these kids. 

"Do you know about the SAPRRCOE?" he asked. "If you need help with Golds-"

"The facility run by Akashi Masaomi? Yes, we researched it when we heard the news break about the end of second Teiko. I don't trust that man," said Kazusa firmly. "Our Nao couldn't get into his systems to see what they were doing with the kids and that's proof enough for me. And the fact that he adopted the Red Miracle- rather, Akashi Seijuurou - worries me further."

"He had no involvement with Teiko, I assure you," said Akashi coolly. "I would not have become his heir otherwise. And his systems are designed by his own hand, so he has no involvement with hackers or any organizations for such.”

"By all accounts the kids are being treated well there, the ones we couldn't... save," said Youji, bitterly. "But there are some that did rehabilitate. Yuuichirou Tajima and Mihashi Ren are both from the second Teiko, and they have integrated back into their schools, back with their families."

Kazusa widened her eyes in surprise. "What? What Splices were they?"

"Tajima-kun was Blue and a bit of Gold, and Ren-kun was Green and Gold. He took it harder but found... solutions."  _ We'll explain Abe-kun's part in this some other time.  _ "But Ren-kun can read minds, and it took him a while, but it's not impossible for them to function normally."

Kasuza smiled wryly. "If it were only as easy as getting over reading minds. It's how when someone is concerned for them, they read that in our minds, see our pain, and how we want to help, and then they withdraw further in on themselves due to what they were forced to do at Teiko because of their mind-reading, and the cycle continues. We watched them as closely as we could but we didn't keep them prisoners. Maybe we should have kept them closer but then we get into my issues about being a Rainbow." 

"We could help them," said Michiru, speaking up from the back of the room for the first time. "If you have Golds that need help, we can do what the JSDF did to reach them-"

"Unless you've got someone whose mind can't be read, I won’t let anyone new interact with them," said Kasuza sharply. "And that's impossible, so don't even bother. We'll handle this- wait. What's that look?"

Youji had glanced at Akashi from the corner of his eye, but apparently that was too much.  _ She's quick _ , noted Youji. But he understood that desperation, and he felt that, in another setting, he probably could have bonded with Kazusa over the insane circumstances that landed these kids in their laps. Maybe, if there was trust built, they could, one day. 

"Do you know someone whose mind can't be read?" demanded Kazusa. "Is that even possible?" 

"The boy I mentioned earlier, Mihashi Ren, has a boyfriend who has a.... genetic predisposition that makes it easier for Golds to be around them," said Youji, thinking fast. "Basically, his thoughts are so loud that it drowns out any other thoughts in the area."  _ Better to make this about Abe-kun and not Furi-kun.  _

Kazusa looked very thoughtful, and then suspicious. "Is he from Teiko? I don't understand."

"Nope, just born human. We don't get it either," said Youji, shrugging. "But there might be others like him. We could help your Golds. Well, we can ask Abe-kun if he wants to give advice or help, anyway. I know Ren-kun always wants to help, and he's been great for our other Gold-Spliced projects." 

_ " _ If we can't have someone that's unable to have their thoughts read, that's probably the next best thing. But if you ever find that, tell me immediately, and we'd be a lot friendlier about having you all maybe meet our kids in person. I know I sound defensive, but you have no idea what it was like those first few years, thinking Teiko would come back and destroy everything, take our children away, kill them. I didn't get to where I am without being paranoid."

"Understandable," said Michiru. 

"There's something else-" started Kazusa, and then there was a loud bang. She whipped around and said, "Abun! We do  _ not _ kick open the door!" 

"Sorry!" yelped a young, excited voice that sounded like it was getting closer. "Is Diego there? Can I talk to him?"

"Nao said Diego wasn't there right now," said another voice, her voice in lilting, accented Japanese. "You can get all gooey on the phone with him later."

"I do not get  _ gooey,  _ what a gross word-"

"Ahem!" 

Two figures came into view of the camera, and Youji noted as some of the Miracles visibly jolted in their seats. 

One was a young Mexican girl, with long, waist-length black hair and a wide grin. The other was a tall, lanky boy with spatters of freckles across his cheeks and bright orange hair and eyes. Unusually bright orange hair and eyes. 

They both leaned over and squished their faces against Kazusa's, peering into the screen and completely ignoring the concept of personal space. Kazusa looked completely used to this and just gestured at the screen. 

"Abun, Teresa, this is Kasamatsu Youji-"

"It  _ is  _ you!" gasped the orange haired boy. "It's so cool to meet you! I'm Abun! Hi!" 

"Ah, nice to meet you, Abun-kun," said Youji, taken slightly aback. "You know who I am?"

"Youji, you've got to stop forgetting that you're famous," groaned Michiru from the back of the room. "Of course this kid knows who you are."

"A bunch of the kids that choose their last name in the Village choose Kasamatsu! It's super popular," added Teresa. "You have like... thirty kids here." 

"We can get into that later," said Kazusa, seeing Youji's shocked face. He felt like he couldn't breathe.  _ Kids were taking his last name? _ "For context, we let children change their names when they turn thirteen if they want, and again at eighteen. Any more than that and it can get a tad confusing, but we try to let them craft their own identities here." 

"Hey, I don't see the Orange Miracle," said Abun, his eyes flicking back and forth across the screen. 

"He lives in Miyagi Prefecture," said Youji, slightly dazed at seeing more of the children that he had thought were dead. First Diego, now clearly a former Orange. 

"Is that far? I don't know anything about Japan," said Abun, shrugging. "I got taken out of Teiko right from the vat and smuggled out."

"Come again? Smuggled out?" said Youji, his brain slowly reaching its breaking point of too much new information.

"Abun, we can get into that later," said Kazusa firmly. "It's important for you two and Nao to see them before I work with the rest of the Mothers tonight on how to... announce this to the rest of the Village."

"That's going to be pretty weird, Mamá," said Teresa, laying her head on Kazusa's shoulder. "Nao said Diego got found by the Blue Miracle by accident so he  _ technically _ didn't break the rules - oh, that's him there! Oh  _ weird, _ he looks just like Diego."

"Diego's a copy of him, of course they look the same, dummy," teased Abun, lightly thumping Teresa on the head, and she tackled him to the floor. They scuffled there for a moment while Kazusa stared directly into the camera and Youji tried to stifle his laughter. 

_ They're kids. They're... god, they could be mistaken for normal kids.  _

"If you two are done," said Kazusa in a no-nonsense voice, and they shuffled up behind her, hair messy, eyes sheepish. "Diego should be back soon- we're waiting for a tropical storm to pass through his run path before he goes. Nao is working on the calculations for it and they should have it done within the hour."

"I don't think we have seen Nao-kun yet?" said Youji.

Kazusa's eyes flickered over to somewhere off to the left, and then back. "Nao has been watching the stream through their powers since Abun entered. They're... not particularly interested in appearing on camera." 

Youji noted as Momoi shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  _ How odd it must be, to know your clone is in that room and you can't see them. _

"Abun, Teresa, can you let the other Mothers know I'll be ready to talk to them this evening?" 

Abun wrapped his arms around Kazusa and squeezed tightly, and Teresa piled on top of him. "You're coming to the movie night tonight, right? You missed the last one because you were on patrol but you're not on patrol tonight. I checked the schedule." 

"Yeah but she's sitting next to me this time," said Teresa. "Anyway you'll just mope and keep an empty spot next to you for Diego anyway so it doesn't matter. You’ve saved up all your bad words for him too. He’s also building a house for them, even though Diego can’t be in it,” she informed the camera, and Youji bit back a laugh at Abun’s offended face.

“What else am I supposed to do with the free time I’d otherwise be with him? He said he’d bring back gifts, so I’m making him one too! It’s only fair!”

“Saving up your bad words?” asked Kishitani, bemused.

“We are only allowed to swear once a day but Abun only saves his one a day to tell Diego he’s-  _ really - _ cute,” said Teresa carefully, and Abun rolled his eyes. “What? I have to save my word to react during movie night! Not all of us save it for someone else, you dork.”

“ _ Anyway _ ,” said Abun loudly, his tan face not hiding his blush. “You’ll sit with us at movie night, right, Kazusa?”

"Yes, I'll be there," said Kasuza, a smile tugging at her lips at the antics. "Run along now." 

With an excited whoop, Abun called out to Teresa, leaping out the door and glowing orange. "I bet I can tell them all before you!" 

Teresa hauled out after him like a small tornado. Kazusa turned back to the camera. "Nao, please leave the stream as well." She waited a moment, and then said, "Alright, now we can talk." 

"On that note," said Youji, turning to the Miracles. "You all can head out now. I'm sure you have a lot of questions for Diego-kun, and we have a lot to discuss here with Kazusa-san."

Aomine looked like he was about to protest but Akashi cleared his throat and looked at him pointedly. Surprisingly, Aomine went with just a huff. 

Once sure all the Miracles were gone and the door was closed, Youji turned back to the screen, unsure if he was prepared for this parent to parent conversation. And then a thought struck him. 

"How are you sure that Nao-kun isn't listening?" asked Youji curiously. 

"I trust them not to listen if I ask," said Kazusa simply.

"And they clearly trust you too," said Youji. "Are they always that touchy?" 

"Yes, they are," said Kazusa. "You should see what movie night looks like. Just piles of children with no concept of personal space. At all. But of course we let them - there’s really no reason not to, as long as we tell them that people outside the Village simply don’t do that as much. You’ve probably noticed that with Diego as well.”

That was... weirdly nice. Youji could not imagine a world where, after escaping Teiko, the Miracles would have voluntarily piled on top of each other. He noted that of all of them, Kise and Momoi reached out for touch the most, and the rest barely at all until they got their boyfriends. 

Speaking of which...

"Well, you're going to have to teach them about personal space at some point," said Youji, feeling that 'parent to parent' vibe a bit better now. "You know, with puberty and sex and all." 

"Well, I read they can't have sex until they are eighteen," said Kazusa, waving her hand impatiently. "So I'm focusing on their early years now and will get to that when I encounter it."

There was an awkward silence, and then Michiru burst out into laughter while Kishitani covered his surprise with coughing. 

"What?" asked Kazusa. 

"Ah," said Youji delicately. "That can... honestly, start as early as thirteen or fourteen sometimes. And more prominently around sixteen and seventeen."

"What?" said Kazusa, aghast. "But I read... in our region, in the laws, it said eighteen! I sat down and read all of the laws of the region when I first arrived so we could be prepared to defend ourselves against authorities. I made sure of it." 

"There's a difference between what the law states and what kids will do when left unattended," said Youji, not really feeling like bringing up the fact that he had been exactly one of those kids. "So yeah, you probably need to keep an eye out for that. How many teenagers do you have?"

"About six or so, but the oldest is thirteen. The majority of these kids are ten or under, but there’s still the Core four, as well as a few others who are older," said Kazusa, panic growing in her eyes. "Oh my God. I don't even know... what..."

"Don't worry," said Youji cheerfully. "Kishitani-sensei is very experienced in giving this talk-"

"You can't rope me into that again!" shrieked Ryohei, shrinking back in his chair. "Also, I'd like to point out, with the knowledge we have now, shouldn't a queer man be giving this talk? Considering that it’s Abun-kun and Diego-kun that are of age and clearly fond of each other… Youji-san, you have four sons, surely you could do it right by him.”

"I don't know if Youji is the right person for this," said Michiru gleefully. "I've heard the stories. I know his sins."

"We will figure it out," said Youji loudly, not wanting Michiru to start telling the stories and terrifying Kazusa. "In the meantime, how are you on medical supplies?" 

"Thankfully most of the kids heal quickly - those that didn't come from Mountain Mothers anyway. We buy what we can from towns nearby but it's a day's walk to them and if it's an emergency we send Diego. But we... we need a doctor."

"For what sort of things?" asked Kishitani, leaning forward in his chair. 

"Nao's top surgery is honestly a priority, along with their sterilization," said Kazusa. "That would improve their mental health immensely, and they've got the funds to do it on their own with a doctor here. But I refuse to let them on the principle that their body chemistry isn't fully human so we can't risk something being discovered or going wrong. We'd need a doctor who understands that Nao's body is different and can accommodate that. 

"But after that, if I had to ask, it would be something like ... a therapist. Diego's finding ways to work around his claustrophobia but they won't last forever. He'll never be able to have the kind of life he wants if he can't be in an enclosed room without panicking and clawing off his own skin. He can't sleep in a bed - feels too much like a storage drawer to him. I can imagine that he's already pushing his limits being inside the JSDF base, even with windows open and a clear exit. Nao- even after the top surgery - has a lot to work out with gender and the trauma they faced about it at Teiko. And all of the kids that were there - and even the ones that were smuggled out right from the vats - they have something they're struggling with. So a doctor first, but everything else after."

“I can help,” said Kishitani immediately. “And, if you’re not opposed to a Miracle coming, Shintarou - my son, you knew him as the Green Miracle - can be my assistant. I could do the top surgery and check in on everyone else. He’s going to be learning to be a doctor soon, but he’s already studied so much, and I know he was the one that initially removed the Miracle tracking devices when they broke out.”

Kazusa looked surprised at that. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose someone had to for the Miracles. Nao just deactivated the ones still left over from when Teiko fell, but they haven’t been removed. We’ve been too worried about risking infection.”

Nodding, Kishitani took out his phone and started typing. “If you can send me a list of exactly what services you need, I can help.”

“I don’t understand why you would,” said Kazusa, and she didn’t sound angry or aggressive. She instead sounded somewhat bewildered. 

“You’re talking to the people who had to process all of the bodies of the ones left behind,” said Michiru, not unkindly. “Don’t think that hasn’t kept us up at night for years. We get that you don’t trust humans, but we want to see kids who escaped from Teiko do well. Consider it our own personal spite agenda.”

Kazusa snorted. “If that’s what gets you to help… I still need to discuss this with the other Mothers. But I think we can reach some sort of agreement.” 

“Are there any Fathers?” asked Kishitani curiously. 

Smiling wryly, Kazusa shook her head. “No - by chance, all of the Rainbows here are women, as Shuuzou is at SAPRRCOE, and the only humans who have joined us are mothers who were getting out of bad situations or their children. The oldest males in the Village are Diego and Abun.”

“And we have Diego right now,” mused Youji. “Must feel unbalanced.”

“It does. We really could use an older male presence here, if not just to have more representation and guidance for the younger boys here” said Kazusa. “But we manage. Abun, Nao, and Teresa have quite stepped up in his absence, and despite everything that came of it, I do think it’s helped Diego understand himself and his roots more. As for the journeys the others will go on, I’m sure they’ll take Diego’s stories into account. It really had to be him that did it first- he’s the most leader type of all of them.” 

“We’ll take care of him,” said Michiru firmly. “We promise.”

Kazusa smiled softly. “Please do. That is my son you have there.”


	4. Chapter 4

"It's really weird to talk to you all," said Diego, swinging his legs as he sat in the chair of the courtyard, possibly somewhat oblivious to the tense strangeness that burdened the Miracles as they sat around him. "We were told really scary things, I think, to keep us from... what's the word? Understanding you?"

"Empathizing," supplied Momoi, still unsure of where to look. If she looked at Diego she saw Aomine. And Aomine was not looking at her. She turned away to see Diego studying Murasakibara, who tilted his head in mild confusion at the boy, who startled at being noticed.

"I'm sorry I keep staring," said Diego nervously, looking down at the floor and back at Murasakibara again. "It's just... GM-P898-RP would have looked like you. Eventually."

Murasakibara, curt of words on a good day, merely nodded. Diego continued, "He... they measured us against you all. Even though we were the same, just copies, there were differences. That's why the other Miracle Replace Pluses never got old enough for me to know them - they were scrapped really early on. Only the three of us got to be out of development at all. And then, when he stopped measuring up to you - well, GM-P989… I guess, GM-P989-RP stopped measuring up against the ruler."

Momoi's stomach clenched, and she felt sick. She instinctively reached out for Aomine for comfort, and then pulled back, unfortunately not fast enough to avoid everyone's notice. Thankfully, no one said anything, and Aomine’s eyes merely flicked from her hand and then back to Diego. 

Murasakibara stared straight ahead, his eyes wide. He looked terrified, a realization striking him, and he flinched, his hands curling into fists, clenching towards his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice tight, apologetic. 

"Don’t say sorry, I don't blame you for what they made you do," said Diego, his voice clear and earnest. "I don't think I ever did. It’s okay.”

"Mn," said Murasakibara, his voice catching in his throat, and Momoi thought about reaching out to touch him as well, but he seemed too tense to accept any affection right now. That, she realized, was probably something he’d go to Himuro about later. After all, he had someone to go to for things like that now. The thought still was odd to her, years after they had escaped, that they had people outside each other to go to.

“Your mom said you could show us pictures now,” said Momoi instead, trying to pull them out of this weird despair spiral that tended to happen when a collection of Teiko survivors gathered in a room. 

“Oh yeah!” he said excitedly, and pulled out his phone. He fiddled with it, and then a bright light appeared out of the camera screen, projecting the image of the camera folder screen onto the floor. “Hmm, which album should I show first… oooh, Movie Night has some good ones…”

“You’ve got a projector in your phone?” asked Kise excitedly. “That’s so cool!” 

“Yeah, Nao altered our phones! It’s  _ super  _ cool.” He fiddled with his phone a bit more, and then aimed it at the blank wall. “Okay so this was the movie night the week before I Ieft- we have them on Saturdays. I think we were watching… um, one of the Disney ones? I don’t really pay attention, it’s hard for me to watch movies. I mostly go to hang out with Abun and Teresa, and Nao if they come, and help supervise the younger kids if they get too rowdy.”

He continued chattering as he swiped through the photos, but Momoi wasn’t listening. How could she listen when she was overwhelmed by the images of happy Projects climbing all over one another? Or sprawled out on colorful blankets, wrapped in sarapes, clinging to each other and laughing?

Almost all of the colors were there. The Purples were the ones who were usually covered in smaller Projects, patient jungle gyms for the others’ tiny hands and limbs. There were a few Blues she could see playfully wrestling with each other. Yellows and Greens flopped upon one another in a way she had never seen Kise or Midorima interact. 

She spotted a few regular human children too, cheerfully mixed in, also taking part in the cuddle piles. Did they know they were different? Did they feel like outsiders, when they were the minority amongst all of these brightly colored children? But given their expressions and the affection they were showing each other, that wasn’t the impression she got at all.

She was grateful that none of them were clones of Miracles besides Diego and Nao. She wasn’t sure she could stand to see the faces of her Generation but younger, more hopeful. It was already hard enough to see Diego as he was, his face far more used to expressing joy than Aomine’s ever was. 

She wondered what this Nao looked like. She wasn’t sure she’d ever know, given how Nao hadn’t wanted to show themselves on screen. Momoi hoped that maybe, one day, she’d get to at least talk to Nao. 

“So… what do you  _ do? _ ” asked Kise curiously. 

“Are you in school?” asked Kuroko. 

Diego hummed as he flicked through a few more photos. “Yes and no? The younger ones are- I can’t go in the schoolhouse, but Abun, Nao, and Teresa study with me, and the Mothers that are teachers sometimes tutor me.” He shrugged. “I’d rather be doing patrols, helping with the gardens, doing repair work… sitting still is hard.”

Diego continued to flip through the photos - beautiful gardens with children and sometimes adults picking food and flowers, to a group of small houses that Momoi assumed was the main Rainbow Village itself. And mountains, so many mountains, and in these photos sometimes a blurry flash of orange, with a stiller shot of Abun laughing or looking out at the horizon. 

“We take these on patrols,” said Diego. “Oh man, we found the best view at the top of this mountain here- Mountain Mom even let me and Abun sleep there overnight. We  _ think _ we saw a jaguar but couldn’t tell. It was still cool though!” Diego looked fondly at the photo of Abun, smiling goofily. “We’re gonna go to the Copper Canyon one day, when we can. It’ll be so fun.” He then flushed slightly, and quickly proceeded to show them more pictures, these seemingly 

There was a splash of bright pink hair in a photo, and Momoi said, “Wait- is that Nao?” 

Diego shook his head. “No, Nao tries really hard to stay out of photos, or covers their face with their hoodies when they have to be in one. This photo, it’s from how some former Teiko kids grow out their hair and cut it off and make wigs for the other children, so you really can’t assume who someone is from their hair color. It changes constantly.”

He zoomed in on the photo. “That’s one of the Whites they smuggled out, with her hair dyed pink. She changes it all the time though, I think it’s green now…” 

“White?” asked Momoi in alarm. “Do they use their powers?”

Diego rapidly shook his head. “No, no. They know they have them but the Mothers are very firm in being strict about this with the White - er, former White Projects. I don’t think there have been any issues with healing powers being used at all.” He smiled reassuringly at her. “They do take really good care of us- the Rainbows, and the Mountain Mothers. I know it’s hard to believe but they do.”

“Given our experiences with Rainbows, you understand our reticence,” said Akashi. He had not spoken much since briefly meeting Tala. Momoi wondered how he was handling it - after all, he currently was sporting double red eyes, which was as good an indication as any that he was at least handling it better than some other things in his past. 

Nodding, Diego said, “Right, and I get that. But we’re doing really great there, I promise.”

There were a few more photos, including one of a beautiful garden that didn’t contain any food, and solely flowers. Diego paused at that one. “Oh. That… that’s the Sunset Garden. It’s… sort of like a graveyard. For… well, all the Projects from before. And some of the Mountain Mother children that didn’t make it. And then-” He bit his lip. “For Allen and Maria. And then for Akito and Akita, more recently. They were Golds who… yeah.” He breathed out slowly, softly, as if he needed that time in the extended exhale to steady himself. “But they at least got to be free. For a while.” 

Momoi thought back to Haizaki, killed once he’d gotten a taste of freedom. Or Nash and Jason, locked away once again. She didn’t think anyone would plant flowers for them, when they eventually died. Then again, part of her bitterly thought, perhaps, they did not deserve flowers. 

“Diego?” Youji was at the door. “Just letting you know we’re done. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me. Akashi-kun, your father’s on his way with his invention for Takeshi. Takeshi, Tala, Michiru and Sayuri are in the west conference room if you’d like to meet with them.” 

“Good,” said Akashi, standing up from his chair swiftly. “Let’s go then.”

The rest of the Miracles took this as their subconscious cue to rise as well, even though they’d long since set aside any real obligation to take a leadership command from him. 

Only Momoi stayed. At Akashi’s questioning look, she said, “I’ll be there in a minute.” As her Generation filtered out, she watched Aomine leave from the corner of her eye. 

“You said you’d answer more questions after we talked to your mom,” she said to Diego. “Is it okay to ask them now?”

“Of course, Momoi-san,” said Diego. Momoi noticed that he wasn’t scratching at his arms- maybe he was getting a little better at being in a room, at least for the moment. “What do you want to know?” His eyes were so very blue, so wide, and his expressions so honest.

It wasn’t as though Aomine’s were…  _ dishonest _ , per se. But he was guarded, and bit back hard when someone bit him. He wore his apathy like armor. Was it seeing and participating in combat, or just a fundamental difference of self that caused the original and the clone to diverge so much in personality?

“Why doesn’t-” she started, and then stopped. “You don’t have to answer a question if you don’t want to.” With Diego’s eager nod, she continued. “Why doesn’t Nao like to appear on camera?”

“They don’t like having proof of… hm, their body? It’s hard to say. I don’t really experience what they do. But they like existing better in a,” and he waved his hands here in a comically sincere parody of typing, “digital space, and the body is just this sort of barrier. But a lot of that is tied to gender stuff, and Mother Kazuto - Nao’s Ocean Mother- and them, they’re working on Nao getting past that. Like my Ocean Mother and my claustrophobia.”

“I can give you resources for that,” said Momoi, feeling immediately protective of Diego. How could she not, when he looked like an Aomine who had never killed someone, never nearly bled out in the battlefield? Like he was some sort of redemption of the Aomine that could have been. “We can find people to help you.”

Diego tilted his head to the side. “You know, it’s funny. When Nao and I were back at Teiko, we didn’t know what you- rather, what the Pink and Blue Miracles were like. We heard stories - from either the scientists talking, or sometimes, in the off chance they had a Project or two with them, from a fellow Project - what you all were like. Or rumored to be like. Stories of Gold’s insane cruelty, or how Red became ruthless after Gold died. Or even rumors that there was a Black Miracle at all, and how he was maybe a ghost. 

“But the one I always wondered about the most was what you two were like. I heard that the Pink and Blue Miracles were inseparable. In sync. Perfect for each other.” He sighed. “And that’s when I knew that we’d be scrapped one day. Because GM-P256-RP and I, we didn’t have that. We never clicked like they told us we would- like a mated pair should. So Nao and I were waiting, hoping that you all would actually do escape, like the rumors we’d heard. Before they made us… even if we didn’t want to…” 

“Before they forced it,” said Momoi, the familiar dread when she thought about the  _ ifs _ around that -  _ if _ they had started the program before they’d broken out. The horror of thinking of the plans Teiko’d had for them, and how the Miracles had agreed to never, ever discuss it.

But she had to talk about it with someone, she felt. To acknowledge the horror of possibility, of what she almost was forced to do. Of how the thoughts still haunted her, made her wonder if she should ever have children, what kind of legacy that was. 

She couldn’t imagine how different she would be if she had been forced to begin that process, how awful it would have been. 

Diego nodded. “I know they’d started the process with GM-B599, on some level, but it was right before the break out so I don’t think the worst of it ever actually happened-”

“What?” asked Momoi, startled. “No. No they didn’t start any processes. I mean-” She choked out a hollow, awkward laugh. “I mean… I’d know, wouldn’t I?”

She didn’t like the silence that followed. Diego looked uncomfortable, and said, his voice quiet, “I don’t think that’s for me to say, Momoi-san. I just remember what the scientists told me.” 

_ Right before the break out…  _ She felt overwhelmed, everything was too much as her brain rushed to connect the dots between everything. Was there something she didn’t know about Aomine? It felt impossible. They were so interwoven, no one knew the other better than each other. 

Except she didn’t know where he had gone, when he had run away in that parking lot. She knew he liked that mountain, often went there to run, but she was frustrated with herself that she hadn’t immediately thought to go there. The roof of Touou, sure, but why didn’t she think to go to that mountain? 

“So after the break out, did you and your Pink - ah, Nao- did you two stay a mated pair?” It was an invasive, selfish question to ask, but she needed context for something she thought only she and Aomine ever experienced. But now she had another set of data to examine, right in front of her. 

“Nao? And me?” Diego shook his head rapidly. “No, no. We never wanted to - no. They and I, we were so relieved when we broke out and wouldn’t have to be like that. We’re just friends now, and work together to help run the Village, but there’s no way we’d ever be like that. I mean,” he laughed and a flush tinted his dark cheeks. “I, um, sort of like someone else, you know?” 

It felt so  _ normal _ and adorable for Diego to say this to her that Momoi’s breath caught at seeing the boy look so bashful and charmed about the fact that he  _ liked _ someone else.

Her and Aomine were a foregone conclusion - there was never a buildup of emotion, a confession, or a first date. 

Her mind shifted back and forth between coolly analytical and deeply emotionally unsettled by these revelations. She knew it was a coping mechanism that she fell back on like the Pink Project she once was, but she did it anyway. She thought to herself, cool and detached,  _ What’s the data here? What does it say?  _

The data said that their genes did not predestine their affections. Momoi’s urge to rest her head against Aomine’s chest was not woven in their DNA. The safety she felt when he was there, knowing that if something were to happen, he’d be there in an instant - that was not encoded in her blood. It was something they’d first felt, then built, creating this space for themselves out of their interactions and shared history, not a compulsion they couldn’t fight like hair color or height. 

These facts brought her comfort in their logical nature. But it didn’t solve the problem of her wanting to know what it would be like to be with someone else, even if they confirmed it wasn’t Teiko’s influence that caused their actual affections. 

“Can I ask you a question now?” asked Diego, and Momoi startled out of her reverie.

“Of course.”

“Can I give your number to Nao? I feel like they’d want to talk to you, but they’re still adjusting to you… well, knowing about everything and all. But talking to Aomine-sensei helped me a lot, and I want Nao to have the chance to do so too. But only if you want to.”

Momoi smiled and held out her hand. “Sure, I can put it into your phone.” When Diego handed it over, she merely glowed pink for a second, and then handed it back. “It’s all in there now.”

“I always found Pink powers to be so cool,” breathed out Diego. “They must be so complex to use. For mine I just run, you know? But Aomine-sensei was teaching me about  _ how _ to run, and how to predict when to slow or speed up based on terrain… I never learned any of that.” 

“How could they not train you?” asked Momoi, puzzled. She remembered all the different trainings the Blues had to do, and how quickly they were scrapped if they didn’t meet the extremely specific requirements set by the scientists. 

“GM-P256-RP and I, we were off the record,” said Diego, his eyes taking on a sad, faraway look. “They just kept us in the storage area, in our... “ He looked pained saying it, and wrapped his arms around himself, hands poised to scratch at his arms, but he did not. He exhaled and said, steadily, “Our containers. So we didn’t get to get out ever except when they wanted to do tests on us, or when they thought you all wouldn’t make it on a mission.” 

“That’s awful,” said Momoi, her stomach clenching. She knew how much Aomine hated being cooped up, and the time when they broke his legs, how much it agonized him not to move. It explained a lot about Diego’s claustrophobia, and probably a lot more beyond that. 

“It’s okay now,” said Diego, who put on a brave smile. “I get to see the sun every day now. He and I get to see the sun every day, even if we weren’t ever supposed to at the same time. Isn’t that great?” 

“It is.” Momoi swallowed down the lump in her throat at the thought of how miserable Diego and Nao must have been. She steadied her breath as well, and then said, “I feel very… frustrated that I didn’t know you two existed. I should have been able to get access to that information. It’s what I  _ do _ .” 

She fumbled in her pocket, squeezing her phone in both hands, the cool plastic soothing her. It gave her something concrete to touch, to not feel so ungrounded. She let the hum of data and energy thrum under her fingers. It reminded her of the world that lived parallel to their own. All the data, systems, people talking, videos streaming, everything held in her hands. She lived this world, as much as she lived in the one she could touch. 

And yet there was still so much she didn’t know. 

Diego nodded sympathetically. “If it helps, Nao gets like that too. When they couldn’t get into Akashi-san’s systems, they threw such a fit - I hadn’t ever seen Nao get that angry before, but I guess it’s encountering his systems that did it.”

Momoi had to laugh. “Me too! I was so mad when I couldn’t get in there. I even brought it up to Akashi-kun but he said that he was very sure that Akashi-san meant him no harm. So I had to let it go.” 

She noticed that Diego’s hands were, likely unbeknownst to him, gripping his arms, nails digging slightly into the skin there. “Oh, Diego, I didn’t notice- do you want to go back to the courtyard now?” 

He looked startled, and then looked at his posture. “Oh- oh, I should.” He shook his head, like a dog getting rid of water. “I’m going to get better at this. I have to, if I want to live like everyone else.” He looked up at her, and his eyes looked incredibly determined, something that seemed a brief, uncanny mirror of Aomine’s eyes when he was focused. “I can do it, you know.”

“I believe you, Diego-kun,” she said softly.

\---

“I’ve just been informed that there is a helicopter on one of our pads,” said Michiru as they were gathered in one of the conference rooms. “Pretty sure that means your sugar daddy showed up from one of his, like, four apartments in Tokyo.”

“He is  _ not _ my sugar daddy,” said Youji wearily as Diego, who had spent some time recovering outside and was now with everyone else, chirped, “What’s a sugar daddy?” 

“When a rich man has the hots for a beefy man,” started Michiru, but Youji loudly said over her, “Unimportant, Diego-kun!” 

“Youji!” called out Masaomi, who had come down the hall. “It’s important you explain these things to the youths, in case he ever wants a sugar daddy of his own.” 

“Jesus Christ, Masa-chan, he’s thirteen,” said Youji, but couldn’t help the swell of affection he felt seeing Masaomi in person. They’d only been dating for a bit now, and were still managing their separate lives in Kyoto and Tokyo, but even seeing him at such a stressful time like this was still good. Even though they’d just seen each other due to the Miracle breakup mess, it felt so long ago, and the whole new set of problems made Youji want to have someone who could fix them by his side, as Masaomi usually did.

Well, when he wasn’t the one causing the problems. But to be fair, he usually ended up fixing those too. 

“Akashi-kun told me he talked to you on the phone but had to go before you could arrive in person. I assume you’ll see him again at your Tokyo apartment tonight then?” asked Youji as Masaomi strolled up.

“Hmm? No, he’s staying with Furihata-kun at his own apartment that he’s bought in Yanaka,” said Masaomi, waving his hand as if it was normal for an eighteen year old to casually buy an apartment in central Tokyo just to use for visiting. He then frowned and stopped, looking around, eyes settling on Diego. “Youji, there’s only one of them here.” 

“Akashi-kun?” asked Diego, who then blinked. “Oh… that means that… you’re his father. Akashi Masaomi.”

“Mhm,” said Masaomi, who raised an eyebrow at Diego. “Didn’t Youji tell you I was coming?”

“I didn’t realize you were  _ that _ Masaomi,” said Diego, now looking incredibly nervous. “I should have paid more attention.” He glanced around, and Youji recognized this not as anxiety stemming from his claustrophobia, but an active sort of caution. 

He didn’t want to be around Masaomi. 

“Everything alright, Diego-kun?” asked Youji kindly, knowing full well it wasn’t okay but unsure of how else to address the topic.

“Ah well,” said Diego, who was scooting towards the open window, but also looking apprehensively at the med wing hallway. “I was sort of told to never be in the same building as Akashi Masaomi, but I don’t want to leave the kids, you see, so I’m not sure what to do.“ He looked at Youji for help, who had never felt like an adult in the first place most times, and now felt weirdly even less able to fix this odd situation where this teenager did not trust his boyfriend.

“Who told you that?” asked Masomi, his voice low, curious, as if he was detached from the conversation. Youji recongized it as Masaomi’s voice when he was on the hunt for information, and likely wouldn’t let go of the conversation if Diego tried to shy away. 

The clone of the fastest man in the world versus the fastest thinker in the world. 

“The children - and Aomine-kun - will be fine, he’s in good hands with Kishitani-sensei,” interjected Youji before Diego could answer. “He was already awake and everything. He’s just getting a checkup, as are the children.”

“But you can tell me who, if you’d like,” said Masaomi.

Youji considered distracting him with -well, not sure what but perhaps a well-placed saucy whisper might do the trick?- when Diego said, “I don’t want you to hurt her if I do.”

Youji startled. “Masa-chan isn’t going to hurt anyone for disliking him. He has a  _ lot  _ of people who dislike him. It’d take forever.” Youji suspected the ‘her’ was Kazusa, who definitely had her reasons to be suspicious of anyone with a scientific background in genetics. 

Diego looks uncomfortably back at the med wing, and then back at the open window. He looks like he was fighting himself, trying not to run, and that’s when Youji noticed that Diego, as he had done earlier, was digging his fingernails into his arms. 

“Diego, I’ll take care of Aomine-kun, alright? You probably need to go outside at this point anyway, go on,” said Youji in his most ‘fatherly’ voice that he could sum up, and Diego was gone out the window in a flash of blue. Masaomi glanced over at Youji, his eyebrow raised.

“Let me guess. Whoever is in charge of where he’s from hates me.” 

“A lot of people hate you, and if they’re Teiko escapees too, they probably think you’re either a former Teiko scientist or think like them,” said Youji. “Hard to blame them for their suspicion. Anyway, Takeshi-kun and Tala-chan are this way,” he finished, gesturing down the hall. 

“You’re going to have to meet Kazusa-san at some point- we’ve been video conferencing with her off and on, allowing for the time difference,” said Michiru, who had been watching this interaction in surprising silence. “Pretty sure she was the one who told him not to talk to you.”

“What does she think I’ll  _ do _ ?” muttered Masaomi as he and Michiru followed Youji. “Obviously he’s fast enough to get away from me if he wants.” He shook his head and pulled a case out of his pocket. “Anyway, I’m not here for him. I made the glasses - incredibly easy in restoring his sight, if this child actually can use their Pink powers.”

Michiru squinted at them. “They look like regular sunglasses.”

“LCD panels inside, so he doesn’t stand out,” said Masaomi, tapping the lens as they entered the room that had temporarily been turned into a kid-friendly space for Takeshi and Tala to take residence in. It looked like Kishitani had finished their checkup, and they seemed like they’d had a bath as well. 

Immediately when Masaomi entered the room, Tala stood up from where she’d been sitting next to Takeshi and stood in front of her little brother, her thin arms out protectively. 

“Hi Kasamtasu-san, Sakurai-san” she said, and then squinted. “And…” 

“You probably won’t be able to read my mind-” said Masaomi, and then he got a good look at her mismatched eyes, and his own widened. “Youji, you did  _ not _ tell me-”

“You know Red,” she said, and Masaomi blinked in shock as she then said, “Ah, you call him Seijuurou.” 

“How are you- nevermind, unimportant,” said Masaomi, and Youji noted that Masaomi was not only flustered, but probably going into overdrive in his head thinking ten thousand questions at once. “Where is-”

“Wait!” she said, and he stopped as she continued to survey him, tense and examining. 

“What is she doing?” he asked Youji.

“Probably assessing your intent. Let’s see if she comes up with a new word to describe how weird you are.” 

“My  _ what- _ ”

“Intent to learn,” she said, nodding in approval, and then stepped aside. “You want to give something to him, right?” 

“Indeed,” said Masaomi, and Youji could tell he wanted to talk to her more, no doubt due to the pieces of Red’s Gold in there, but his focus shifted to Takeshi, who looked shy as he turned away and tucked his head behind Tala’s legs. 

“He doesn’t have Intent to Harm,” said Tala. “He has glasses for you.” And then she frowned. “He can’t use glasses, Akashi-san. They took out his eyes.”

“If you can read my mind, then you’d know that these are special,” he responded, waving them in front of her.

She grumbled, annoyed at having to reveal a weakness. It, amusingly, looked like when Masaomi was caught in a vulnerable moment. “I can’t use it all the time or my head feels fuzzy. I just needed to see if you were going to hurt us.” 

“I assure you I’m not going to,” said Masaomi, and he handed them to Takeshi. “Do you need help? You may have to activate your Pink powers to do it, but you’ll have to see for yourself how you work with them.”

Youji was struck by the variance in attitudes Masaomi took towards people. Despite all of his bitching about not doing well with young children, he handled the Second Teiko kids far better than Youji had ever expected. He once again was mildly overwhelmed by how much love was in Masaomi, despite many people thinking he had none in him at all. 

Granted, it was very selectively distributed, but it was still there.

“I can do it, thank you,” said Takeshi, peeking a bit out behind from Tala, who was still standing somewhat defensively in front of him, although not in a way that suggested she still feared Masaomi. It was almost as if she was just working off of instinct to stand in front of Takeshi when someone she didn’t know was around. “Who are you?”

“Akashi Seijuurou’s father. You remember Seijuurou? He was in Second Teiko with you all, briefly,” said Masaomi, and Takeshi nodded. 

“I think…. He was the one who gave us the Order, right?” 

“Yes,” said Tala, as Masaomi looked slightly stunned at this. “He told us to live. That’s the one.”

Takeshi nodded, and turned away from everyone, the blindfold sliding off of his face. Youji withheld a flinch as he saw two blood-stained spots where the blindfold would have been pressed against the eyes, and felt that familiar anger at Teiko welling up in his chest. 

Slipping on the glasses, Takeshi glowed Pink, and then yelped in surprise. “I can see!” 

Tala whipped around as Takeshi turned to face her, and he cried out, “Tala! It’s you!” 

She grabbed him and pulled him into a hug, and Takeshi blinked over her shoulder, his head darting in small motions to see everyone. “Kasamatsu-san? Sakurai-san? And- Akashi-san?” He glowed pink all over, and then it flickered, and then went away. “But - I’m not using my powers, but I can still see?” 

“It takes from your residual powers - you only need to activate it once in a while, and the battery is solar powered but should last a long time anyway.” Masaomi turned to Tala, who had released Takeshi and was now once again staring intently at him. “Yes?” 

“You’re a scientist,” she said, her voice distrustful. “But you don’t intend harm. I don’t understand.”

“Not all scientists intend harm,” said Masaomi. “Despite the ones you met.”

She looked at him intensely again, brown and gold eyes flickering up and down and then settled on his face. 

“Thank you,” she said, and Youji breathed out a sigh of relief that this went as well as it did. 

Now, for the difficult meeting. 

\----

“You missed the parent meeting earlier when the kids were in the room, but it’s just going to be us three for now,” said Youji, not mentioning that he fully expected this to go poorly and that’s why he had made it just the three of them. It was easier to mitigate damage control when Masaomi was pissing off just one person instead of everyone in the room. 

Youji set up the video call and muttered to Masaomi under his breath as it connected, “So… _please_ _behave_.”

“I have literally never promised to do that in my life,” said Masaomi, and Youji, sadly, knew that to be true. 

Kazusa’s video appeared on screen. She, surprisingly, was holding a baby, who had a tuft of black hair swirling at the top of his little head. He was wrapped in a colorful red blanket, cozied up against Kazusa’s chest. “Youji, good to see you again,” she said warmly. “Please excuse little Ricardo here, he’s from one of the new Mountain Mothers who arrived while pregnant. I happened to be on feeding duty while she’s taking a nap.”

“Very important for the mother to get sleep,” agreed Youji, remembering the unfortunate days of screaming babies all throughout the night. 

She nodded, and then her face grimaced slightly upon looking at Masaomi. “Akashi-san.” 

“So you must be Nijimura Kazusa,” said Masaomi, and she flinched, her face set angrily. “Oh, I see you’re not a fan of me knowing your name. Why is that?”

"Because I don't trust you, Akashi-san," said Kazusa firmly, and Youji was admittedly slightly relieved that they didn’t have to go through many pleasantries to get to this point. This conversation was going to be rough - no need to drag out the road to arrive at where they eventually needed to be. 

Her face looked rather dire in contrast to the baby, who was sweetly milk-drunk, cuddling against her chest as he happily drank from the bottle. "Nao looked through the files she took from Teiko and found one on you. Why were you offered a position as a head researcher there when you were sixteen - no interview, just an offer?" 

"I had the credentials they wanted, I assume," said Masaomi. "Why do you care? I didn't end up working there. I had better things to do." 

"I ask because I wonder what horrific things you had to have done by the time you were sixteen to merit the admiration of men that create and torture children into becoming weapons," said Kazusa, her voice edged with anger.

Youji raised an eyebrow at Masaomi, who, if anyone else had been looking at him, would have assumed that Masaomi was entirely unaffected by this. However, his brow was slightly creased, his eyes a fraction narrowed. "Ah, you hate me, don't you?" 

"It sickens me that my son is in the same building as you. The only reason that I'm not demanding he leave the JSDF headquarters is because he's the second fastest being on Earth and could get away from you if you tried to take him." 

"I don't have any interest in kidnapping your son," said Masaomi, sounding annoyed. "I already have one, and he's better than yours." 

Youji was about to point out that this was a fairly awful thing to say but Kazusa cut him off. "Yes, you have Akashi Seijuurou. Which I have wondered how you pulled that off, considering the Red I knew hardly respected anyone. Which leads me to believe it was through some form of falsehood or trickery."

Masaomi shrugged. "You could have asked him yourself, you know. Except you all kept to yourself and didn't tell anyone you existed so you cut yourself off from that opportunity.” 

“We kept ourselves quiet to avoid attracting attention from the likes of those such as Second Teiko, and frankly, people like you. If we didn’t have Nao we probably couldn’t have done it. Even then, she had to work daily to make sure that your skimmers didn’t catch word of our presence here, as offline as we kept it.” Kazusa shifted uncomfortably in her seat, holding the baby close to her as she kept the bottle to his mouth. 

Youji was unsure if should interject at any point. He knew this would be painful, and their connection with the Rainbow Village was already shaky. But he knew that Masaomi could help immensely - not just with cash, but resources, technology, like the glasses he’d given Takeshi. So he kept silent, watching the back and forth like a ping-pong game with the balance of traumatized children’s livelihoods on the line. 

She continued as she curled herself down to hold the baby closer to her chest. “So given what I know about you, I distrust you inherently. There is no reason for you not to create another Teiko and profit from the weapons you could create. I doubt there is anyone in this world who could tell you not to do something and you wouldn’t do it. So not only are your motives unclear, but your reasoning for  _ not _ doing all this is also unclear. Therein is my distrust.”

“Interesting analysis,” said Masaomi. “You’re wrong, of course. But you will continue distrusting me - which is fine, most people do and they are right to do so. But at the detriment of your children? You know that I could help. Supplies, services, people. Beyond money, I could be an amazing asset.” 

“Why do you even care? I just don’t believe that you’d let us just exist on our own, not with some of these Projects with powers that you could use.” Kazusa sounded like she was restraining the fury in her voice, which Youji had no idea how to address, or how to reassure her that Masaomi had extremely good reasons for not getting involved in manipulating Projects. But something she said caught his attention and seemed very important. 

“Some?” asked Youji in confusion, breaking his quiet. “They’re Projects. Don’t they all have powers to some degree?” 

“No,” said Kazusa. “Projects were made and then they were tested for initial ability. If they lacked any powers at all, they were instantly scrapped. The majority of Projects were made, tested, and scrapped - probably ninety percent. Because so many of the children here were smuggled out from the vats before they got the chance to be tested, they don’t have powers. I’d say of all of the current children who came from Teiko here, only about twenty percent of them have powers, and none of them were as powerful as Generation Miracle except Nao and Diego, so everyone else likely would have been scrapped at some point. Take Abun - he’s far too tall for an Orange. Would have been an instant scrap had he not been smuggled out.”

The baby in her arms started to cry, and she sighed, rocking him a bit in her arms, and he settled again. Youji noticed the bags under her eyes, her tense mouth, and then realized just how  _ young _ she was, if he’d done the math in his head correctly. 

“Kazusa-san,” said Youji softly. “How old are you?” 

She looked confused at the question, but answered, “Nineteen.”

“You’re nineteen years old and running a village of over one hundred people, the most of whom are children, some of whom have powers that are dangerous and extraordinary,” said Youji. “That is a lot. We can help.” 

Youji could see the vulnerability in her face, remembered hearing the tremble in her voice when she mentioned the Golds that had committed suicide. She needed their help, and he knew that he could steal Masaomi’s credit cards and send over supplies himself, but when it came to hiring doctors, trusted ones who could work with Projects like those at SAPRRCOE, it’d take a lot more than Youji knew how to do. Kishitani and Midorima could do an initial checkup but consistent care was another thing. They didn’t have the resources. 

But Masaomi did.

“You know who I am,” said Youji, “You know I want only the best for these kids because I have four children of my own, one of which was a Project. Masa-chan  _ can _ help you, and from what you told me earlier, there are immediate medical and psychological concerns that these kids need that you can’t provide for. But we can.” 

“I can tell you a hundred times that I have no interest in doing anything with your children,” said Masaomi. “I don’t think you’ll care or listen. But you should know that I wouldn’t have adopted Seijuurou or made him my heir, or created SAPRRCOE, if my actual intentions were to use this somehow in a grand weapons-making scheme. You said it yourself - Seijuurou, when you knew him, hardly respected anyone. So you have to believe that he found something in me worth sticking around for.”

She looked pained and said, “Let me talk it over more with the other Mothers and the Core children. When Diego gets back to us.  _ Unharmed _ ,” she added with emphasis, and Masaomi rolled his eyes.

“I told you. I have no interest in kidnapping your son.”

“When he comes back to me I’ll be sure of it then, won’t I?” she said. “But yes, Youji, I will think about it. It’s true. We can’t give these children everything they need- if they were all like Ricardo here, we might be able to, but the fact is that they aren’t, and we already lost too many by not having the right resources.” She exhaled, and Ricardo pushed the bottle away from his face, clearly done with the feeding and this conversation. “I need to go- but keep in touch. And take care of Diego. Don’t let him stay inside too long, I know he’s pushing himself. The second he starts scratching his arms, he needs to go outside.” 

Youji nodded. “Completely understood. We promised we’d take care of him. I meant it.”

\---

Youji waited until he and Masaomi were alone in his office before bringing up something that he had been very purposefully withholding until now.

“In our briefings, it looks like Sayuri said that there was a scientist there - the assistant, Koshi - who was probably some kind of Legacy,” said Youji, and Masaomi’s eyes took on a dangerous glint.

“Did she now?” 

“He’s dead, so take your finger off the trigger,” said Youji, very carefully noting Masaomi’s body language, which was wound taut. “Also, it sounds like that scientist had been working at Teiko since Aomine-kun was there, as he even mentioned he recognized Koshi’s voice from back then.”

“What was his power?”

“Sayuri said hypnosis, likely. Diego-kun got caught by it.”

“Aries,” murmured Masaomi. “He must have hid it well. A Legacy, working for Teiko even then… what a mess.” He looked up at Youji, who definitely had concern prominently displayed on his face. “What? He’s dead, like you said. I checked, you know - two scientists, two bodies. So I’m not going to do anything about this one. Sounds like he’d gone rogue well before I made my declaration.”

“The JSDF checked, you mean” said Youji, frowning.

“Well, my people double checked,” said Masaomi, and Youji heaved out a sigh. “Anyhow, it’s been nearly ten hours since we last kissed, you know.” 

“Well it’s been a  _ tad  _ busy here-” started Youji, but in a swift motion, Masaomi pulled him close for a possessive, intense kiss, and Youji promptly forgot about everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours in favor of focusing solely on the present. 

\---

“You’re going to have to file a report about this, even if you were technically off duty,” said Michiru as Sayuri sat down on the other side of her desk. “Given how much went down.”

“Blegh,” said Sayuri, but her heart wasn’t in it. Michiru noticed this, and raised an eyebrow.

“Talk. What’s going on?”

Sayuri tilted her head back and thought about what to say. All of the thoughts she had since she first heard about the breakup, what happened in that parking lot, her talk with Aomine at the campfire, what she overheard at the scientists’ facility, everything that Diego had said. It all seemed to point towards an obvious answer. 

“I think Daiki should go over there and be with the Rainbow Village for a while.”

Michiru set her mouth in a firm line. “Is that so?”

Sayuri gestured out of the door. “I don’t think he’s going to grow well here, but maybe he can find something for himself there. Once he graduates, anyway. I know everyone wants him to at least have a high school degree, which, fine, even though getting that boy to sit for seven hours a day is an impossible task on good days. But after, yeah, I think he should go over there and help them.”

“Help them how?” Michiru was still looking at her niece with skepticism, but Sayuri hadn’t been entirely shot down yet, so she went on. 

“Tiny Daiki said they do patrols. Our Daiki would be excellent at that. Also, someone has to teach Tiny Daiki how to run, as apparently they didn’t teach him technique at all or anything. Honestly, some basic hand to hand combat wouldn’t be a bad idea either- I genuinely don’t know how much self-defense they know over there.”

“Need I even interject about the slippery slope of turning former Projects into soldiers?”

“Self-defense isn’t making them into soldiers,” said Sayuri sharply, and Michiru held up her hands in a ‘fine, fine’ sort of motion.

“So how long do you think he’d be over there? You know, if the Mothers let him. Given how against they were about the Miracles even knowing about their Village it’d be a tough sell to let him go at all.”

Sayuri tapped her fingers on her mouth. “I’m going to guess once Diego is back safe and sound they’ll feel better about it. I feel like Daiki’s meant to have some sort of role protecting people. You’ve never been in combat with him, but I was,when we were back there. He’s in his element when he’s got something to protect, to watch over. I think…” 

She leaned back in the chair, quiet for a moment, and then said, “Obasan, I don’t want to say he doesn’t have a purpose here - he does actually enjoy basketball team, despite his bitching to the contrary, and in the past I know he was staying for Sacchan but…”

“But?” supplied Michiru.

“But I think he’s not going to find one until he’s been somewhere else, away from his Generation, since it’s not his job to protect them anymore. Especially not with everyone probably going other places next year, if they get into different universities or their boyfriends go live somewhere else and they follow.” Sayuri steepled her fingers and sighed. “You and I both know he isn’t destined for some office job. Or even, like, retail. I can’t see him working a job unless it’s something here like the JDSF, but even then, he doesn’t do well with the chain of command, and you’re right- sending him back to being a soldier seems like some kind of fucked up circle that we don’t want to perpetuate.”

Michiru continued to look at Sayuri, hard, intense. She then, after a moment, slumped down in her chair. “Well, fuck. Fuck dammit  _ shit _ . You’re probably right.” She then raised her perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Well? Say the rest. I know there’s more in there.”

“Fine.” Here was the big one. “Daiki’s got some serious fucking trauma. Now I know they all do-” said Sayuri as Michiru rolled her eyes in a ‘oh like that’s  _ news? _ ’ expression. “But everyone one of them has a special, weird, specific trauma, and I feel like we didn’t know Daiki’s and just let it go until now.”

“So what, you two sat down over coffee and had a heart to heart?” 

“If you replace coffee with fish around a campfire, sure, I forced him to sit down and listen to me talk. Then the rest I extrapolated from stuff he’d said before and from what I’ve heard Sacchan say. Plus I heard one of the scientists go off about some creepy ass shit that made me connect all the dots.” 

“Does it have to do with Sacchan?” asked Michiru in a way that made it clear she already knew the answer.

“You guessed it.” Sayuri blew out a long breath. “I’m not going to break his confidence- although, to be fair, most of this was extrapolated and just confirmed by his reactions - but it’s probably for the best for now that he and Sacchan are… broken up, or whatever. But maybe not forever. I don’t know.” 

“Is it anything we can help with?” asked Michiru. 

“Not sure. I need some time to think about it,” said Sayuri. “Hell, I don’t even know if I’ve processed what I’ve learned. This plus all that nonsense with the Legacy? How do you even deal with all this insane bullshit that keeps coming at you on a like, yearly basis?”

“We all have our coping mechanisms. Maybe yours will be landing a billionaire like Youji,” said Michiru, rolling her eyes. “See, me, I just swindle them. It’s a family tradition, I’ll tell you about it sometime.” 

Sayuri raised an eyebrow but instead said, “I’ll keep that in mind. For now, I’m just going to see if I can bleach that shitty scientist’s words out of my head.” Sayuri put her face in her hands. “The…  _ garbage _ he said, Obasan. Talked to Daiki like he was a fucking school science project. Had the other kid so wired to a machine that it took me- it took  _ me _ \- nearly a minute a wire to get him out or it would have fried the kid. Jesus.” She then looked up, and laughed hollowly. “Silver lining. I got to pistolwhip one of them across the face.” 

Michiru grinned. “God, I’ve fantasized about that so many times.” Her face then sobered a bit. “You know, most of the families of the Miracles haven’t had a run in with any of the scientists. That’s… a pretty unsettling experience. You’ll be thinking about it for a while. That stuff… it sticks with you.”

“Yeah, well, I signed up for it, didn’t it? That’s a family tradition too.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Sayuri continued, shifting the topic. “Anyway… I know Daiki can be an asshole. He is, in fact, an asshole. But given that he tried to return and couldn’t, and frankly, neither of them were prepared to have that conversation when they did, I feel like some separation would be good for them.” 

She threw up her hands. “I don’t blame him for running away, to be honest, because he had no context for handling what was happening, although I’m sure he had other options. But he needed that time away, and then all this went down, so he didn’t even get time to really process it. So I don’t even think he knows now.” 

Michiru gestured for her niece to continue, unwilling to interrupt. 

Sayuri blew out a long breath. “All that to say, fuck if I know what  _ he  _ wants. But I feel like if I nudge him in a direction, he’s less likely to run from it than if someone else did, at least, based on his cooperation during that shitshow back there.”

Michiru looked thoughtful, inquisitive. “He had your back there? He listened?”

Sayuri nodded. “Every second. He’s too self-sacrificing for his own good. I think that’s coded in his genes, honestly.” 

Nodding, Michiru took out her phone, which buzzed several times insistently. “They’re calling a meeting of the Miracle Guardians. I think you should be there too, in Shigure’s absence. Especially given everything that went down.” 

Sayuri stood up, straightening out her uniform. “Got it.”

“And Sayuri?” 

“Hm?”

“How did you know he’d be there?” 

Sayuri hummed, and said, “Had a hunch. It’s a good place to go when you’re dealing with things like that.”

After all, she’d been the one to show him the mountain.

\---

As they waited for the other Guardians to gather, Masaomi and Kishitani stood off to the side, each on their phones. 

Kishitani was never particularly sure of how to handle Masaomi. Especially not after the events from several months ago. He felt that Masaomi was absolutely serious in his threat against the Legacy, especially after all of the documents he’d seen, including the genetic maps. 

Which is why, against his better judgement, Kishitani turned to Masaomi and said, “Akashi-san. A moment?”

Masaomi raised his eyebrow and put his phone in his pocket. “Yes, Kishitani-sensei?”

Kishitani took a deep breath and said, “ _ You have seen those you never should have looked upon, and those I wished to know you did not see. So now and for all future time be dark! _ "

That got Masaomi’s completely undivided attention. “Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, said as he was stabbing out his own eyes after learning of his destiny and the truth of what he had wrought,” he said approvingly. “Quite the heavy quote, sensei.”

“It is,” agreed Kishitani, and while he was still intimidated by Masaomi sometimes, he felt, given the knowledge he had now, that they were at least on a more equal level. “I had to read that play in my university Western Classics class. I never quite realized the sense of horror, or dread, that comes with the burden of knowledge. But now I am well aware of what that feels like. To see something and think -  _ My god, this was not for any human to know. _ ”

Masaomi looked at Kishitani with a scrutinizing gaze. It was not prying or unkind, but merely curious.  _ Intent to learn _ , thought Kishitani, who met Masaomi’s stare head on. Tala had indeed identified him correctly. 

“I cannot get the images of the genetic maps out of my mind,” said Kishitani, who broke the gaze to look down at his hands. “Sometimes, I still dream of the papers in my hands. All the secrets to why my son is the way he is. Down to the very codes of his genetic makeup. All of the awful, horrible things done to his body to force him to be a weapon for others.” 

“A terrible, heavy weight to carry indeed,” said Masaomi mildly. 

“There is no one else in the world that shares this burden besides you and I, Akashi-san,” said Kishitani, his voice weighed down with this onus, this load on his soul. “None of the others that saw it understood it. And thus, it is only you and I that have this unique knowledge.” He bowed his head slightly - not in deference, but rather, the exhaustion that comes with weary defeat. “I just need to know that I am not alone in my horror.” 

Masaomi did not immediately respond. The two stood there, leaning against the wall, in silence. Others passed in front of them, preparing to talk in the conference room about the future of the two children who had stumbled into their care, as seven children had those years ago. 

“Yes,” said Masaomi, and Kishitani jerked his head up. 

“Akashi-san?”

“Yes. There is, and always will be, that horror there.” 

It was then that they both heard Youji call for them down the hall. They both pushed themselves off of the wall and began their walk there in quiet, solemn unison.

\---

After the meeting where the fate of the two children was decided, Youji went to his office to prepare the official reports with Kishitani and Michiru. Unsurprisingly, something of this nature took far more paperwork than Youji ever wanted to do, but that was bureaucracy, he supposed. Masaomi had returned to his base, muttering something about eye replacements, for which Youji had no useful input and let him be.

But he had a few minutes to wander and not be squinting at an Excel sheet, so he left the other two in his office to meander into the courtyard, where he saw Diego sitting in the chair they’d set up for him. He had his phone out in front of him, and Youji realized that he was talking to Kazusa.

“Mom, mom, look,” said Diego, holding up a small, white-and-black speckled rock. “It’s volcanic rock! I got it from the ocean. Because you’re my Ocean Mother. Do you like it? I’m bringing it back as your souvenir.” 

“It’s lovely, Diego,” said Kazusa, smiling softly as her son pocketed the rock. “Thank you for thinking of me.” 

“Did anything cool happen when I was gone?” asked Diego, propping his face up and tilting his head at her. “Did I miss anything exciting?”

“You had plenty of excitement over there, you know,” said Kazusa. “Everyone seems very curious to hear about your meetings with the Miracles, once we told them about it.” 

“I played basketball with them!” he said. He stood up from his chair and walked around, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he held out the phone in front of him. “Maybe Abun and I can build a basketball hoop or two so we can play. Not that I’ll stop playing soccer or anything,” he added quickly, and Kazusa laughed.

“I wouldn’t ever expect you all to stop playing soccer. And we can look into that, if you all have the time to put some hoops together.” 

Diego spotted Youji hovering at the edge of the courtyard and waved. “Kasamatsu-san! Hi!” 

“Diego-kun, Kazusa-san,” said Youji, giving them a wave. “I’m not interrupting am I?”

Diego shook his head. “I was going to see how Takeshi and Tala were doing in a minute.”

“Speaking of that, I do have updates,” said Youji. “Diego-kun, do you mind if I speak to Kazusa alone for a minute? I’ll return your phone to you when I’m done.”

“Sure thing,” said Diego. “I’ll talk to you later, bye Mom!” He then handed over his phone without any concern, which was laughable for a teenage boy, if any of his sons were to go off of. 

“He’s very trusting,” said Youji as Diego quickly zoomed out of the courtyard. 

“Well, he trusts his gut instinct, and given that no one he has trusted has attacked him yet, he’s been right,” said Kazusa. “A fact for which I am very grateful.”

“I imagine sending him off was pretty rough. It’s not the same thing, but I felt that way sending my oldest to college,” said Youji. He chose not to mention that the actual stressful times were when Yukio was kidnapped and held at gunpoint by his insane brother. But regardless of why, Youji did really understand, and he hoped that came through somehow. 

“And you have Kise Ryouta, after all,” said Kazusa. “So you know the… nuances needed to raise former Projects.”

“Right,” said Youji. “Which leads us to our next point. Tala and Takeshi.” 

“What was the decision made by the JSDF?” asked Kazusa, her voice wary. 

“You’re not going to like it,” said Youji, “But SAPRRCOE would be best for them. Especially given that Masaomi is going to make Takeshi replacement eyes. But I promise you, the children there are extremely well cared for. And you said yourself, taking them on, especially a Gold, would be too much. I don’t even think any of our staff here is able to take in those two, with their specific issues to work through.” 

“I understand. I just hope you’re right,” said Kazusa. “You trust this Akashi Masaomi?”

“With my life,” said Youji firmly.

“In that case… it should be noted that they seem very attached to Diego and Aomine-kun,” said Kazusa. “I hope you’ll discuss with Aomine-kun about how that would go, if he could see them. If he wants to, that is.” 

“I’ll talk with him about that,” said Youji, frowning. “Would you let Diego-kun visit them at SAPRRCOE?”

Kazusa sighed, and said, “I don’t know. It’s hard to say - I need time to process this. He’s not trapped here. Technically he could leave whenever he wanted… it’s not as if we’d punish them.” Her mouth quirked wryly. “I’m not a prison guard anymore, you see.” 

_ Let us work together with you on this,  _ thought Youji.  _ Take down your walls and let us help you. Help the kids.  _

She paused for a moment, and then continued. “I’ll tell this to the other Mothers and get back to you. And… how is Diego really doing?” 

“He’s very friendly and curious about everything here, but he is also excited to go back,” said Youji. “Kid doesn’t seem like he is a mastermind at hiding his emotions, so I do think he really is okay.” 

Kazusa snorted a little bit. “Yes, that’s very true. I admit, it makes taking care of him far easier than some of the more unreadable children.” She looked briefly distant and then said, “Then again, it could be me. It’s a difficult relationship, sometimes, being a former Rainbow, with some of these children. I do wonder…”

“They see you as their mother, and mean it,” said Youji, seeing that flicker of vulnerability. “Did you know that my son-” His throat caught. He pushed through, choking down the ever-present grief. “Yukio would bring his mother little rocks he found on the ground too. If he thought they were pretty.” 

“Did he now?” said Kazusa, musing in her voice, and Youji thought to himself,  _ This, here. This is the common ground we could stand on together.  _

\---

It was Diego’s last night in Japan, and the Miracle Guardians had decided to send him off with a meal full of Japanese foods. After hearing that he had never had any authentic Japanese cuisine, the Guardians that could cook took it upon themselves to make something while the others brought in items. The only Miracle there was Aomine, who still felt the need to watch over Diego, even though he could clearly take care of himself. 

“Raw fish?” asked Diego, picking up the sushi with a fork, as he had never actually used chopsticks before. “That’s safe?”

“This kind is,” said Michiru, picking up some herself. “Here, try it with the soy sauce.”

“Don’t fill him up before he’s tried the karaage Nobuko made,” chided Kishitani. 

“He’s a clone of Aomine, we know he’s a bottomless pit,” said Sayuri, stealing nigiri from her aunt’s tray. “Aww you already took all the tuna.”

“Brat,” said Michiru, thwacking her niece’s chopstick with her own. “What did you even contribute?”

“Snacks, obviously,” said Sayuri, pointing to a pile of completely randomly flavored items. “Behold all of the horrific flavors that he should try, as part of his heritage. Spicy Lobster potato chips! Lasagna Cup Noodles! Tomato flavored gummies!” 

“We promised his mom we wouldn’t hurt him,” said Youji. “None of that sounds safe for consumption.”

“His loss,” said Sayuri, grabbing the Spicy Lobster potato chips. “Tiny Daiki, you should try the tomato gummies.”

“How can you stand to eat that?” asked Aomine as Diego eagerly reached for the tomato flavored gummies, popping one in his mouth in the same bite as the sushi. 

“I have to try everything before I get back! I won’t get to have this again for a while.” He chewed thoughtfully, and then swallowed. “Mmm. Tomato-ey. And fishy.”

“Apparently our taste buds do differ,” grumbled Aomine, who shuddered at the thought of combining those two flavors. 

“I mean, sure, our bodies are the same, but there’s no way to make actual copies of someone,” said Diego, reaching for the karaage that Kishitani not-subtly was pushing towards him. “The scientists, they weren’t accounting for our souls, after all.”

Aomine stared at him. How could he just…  _ say _ that? “What?”

Putting down the karaage, Diego stared at Aomine with complete sincerity. “The scientists. They cloned you and made me, and thought we would be the same. But they weren’t accounting for our souls.” 

The adults stared, stunned, but Diego returned to the karaage with glee, munching away eagerly. “Wow this is incredible! We should make this back at the Village.”

“Kid you switch tracks faster than a Nozomi train,” whistled Michiru. “Who taught you about souls?”

“My Mountain Mom, mostly! But Abun has read a lot - he’s so smart - and he told me about soul stuff in books. You can’t have two of the same soul. So,” Diego shrugged, now reaching over for the Spicy Lobster potato chips. “Me and Aomine-sensei? Different souls.” He ate a chip, and then squinched his face, shuddering. “No, no. These… no.” 

“More for me then,” Sayuri said, plucking the bag out of his hands. 

The conversation shifted from there as Diego eventually came to the conclusion that sushi was great, karaage needed to be imported to Mexico, and Spicy Lobster potato chips were “better left in Japan.” 

“Can we do one more game of basketball before I go?” asked Diego after they had all cleaned up and adults were filtering out.

Aomine replied in surprisingly good humor, “If you can beat me to the court.” 

And then less than a second later, flashes of blue whipped through the courtyard, and like that, they were gone. 

\---

Momoi was picking over the leftovers from Diego’s mini-buffet in the JSDF break room when she was hit by a series of buzzes in her pocket. She startled and pulled her phone out, glancing at the screen. There was a text awaiting her, flashing pink there against the phone background of the Miracles at the basketball game they’d arranged after the first Winter Cup.

_ Unknown number - Sonora, Mexico:  _

_ Hello. Diego gave me your number. I am Nao. It is nice to meet you. I do not know how much Diego told you about me, but I think we could learn a lot from each other. I know I have a lot I could learn from you.  _

Smiling, Momoi began to text back. 

\----

“So I’ll be taking off from these coordinates,” said Diego, and Aomine saw the text pop up on his screen. He tapped and zoomed in when the map opened- a beach that was a decent ways away from a city port, out far enough to make a good leap-off point to begin running on water. 

“Run with me to the shore?” asked Diego, his face bright and hopeful. He’d finished his goodbyes to Takeshi and Tala, promising to see them, if his mothers allowed, as well as his farewells to the other Miracles and JSDF members. 

Aomine couldn’t say no, because what kind of an asshole sensei would he be if he did - god, he was a  _ sensei _ now apparently, he didn’t even interact with the freshman on the Touou team like this and he’d had multiple practices with them. “Yeah, sure,” he said, trying to make it sound more defeated than he actually felt, but Diego perked up like an eager duckling anyway. 

“Race you there!” With that, Diego took off, and Aomine glanced over at Momoi, who had stayed as the other Miracles had wandered off after their awkward but polite goodbyes. They, like Aomine, were still processing everything, and could only handle so much emotion at a time. Aomine privately suspected the Miracle Boyfriends were going to be handling a lot of repressed weirdness in the upcoming week as they met with their respective partners. 

Well, they had signed up for it after all. That was on them. 

But Momoi had stayed, and he knew that yes, this was going to be The Talk. Was he ready for it? Not particularly, but it had to happen, so, like any other challenge, he grit his teeth and strapped in. 

He’d already had a talk with Sayuri today, who had suggested something to him that he had already considered - going to stay with the Rainbow Village after graduation. That in itself was momentous enough for him, and usually one Serious Talk Per Year was all he allowed himself, but apparently the new person he was becoming had these sort of fuckin’ things all the time, so another one was coming up, regardless of if he was ready for it or not. 

“I’m coming back,” said Aomine, and Satsuki’s face still looked worried, brows drawn up, mouth tight. “Satsuki, I said I’m coming back, so I am, okay?” His voice was gruff, and he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. But he would come back. 

To what, he honestly didn’t know. But regardless, he had to face it head on.

“Okay,” she said, her voice small, but trusting.

So, he turned and ran.

\---

The shore was quiet with only a handful people in the distance on the beach. Diego was already there and poking around, looking for shells. “Is everything okay with Momoi-san?” asked Diego as Aomine came up, sand settling behind him as he stopped. 

“It’ll be… whatever, I guess,” said Aomine in the least eloquent way possible. 

Diego looked like he was about to say something, and then almost comically screwed his mouth shut.

“Spit it out, kid,” said Aomine, and Diego squinched his face in a way that Aomine was very sure his own face had never done. 

“I know it’s complicated with you and her. But I’m the only other person in the world that gets it from your perspective. So… I guess, I want to say, Nao and me, we never felt for each other like that. Ever. We dreaded the possibility of having to be like that someday.” He took a big breath. “So, doesn’t it mean something? That you guys had a thing, and actually wanted it?”

“Not gonna force her into something she doesn’t want now,” said Aomine, his stomach twisting because of how messy everything was, and much it felt like pulling apart snarled knots in a ball of pink-and-blue yarn. He was losing strands and didn’t know what they’d look like after they untangled. 

“Yeah, I know you wouldn’t. Because you didn’t when they told you to, and you wouldn’t do it now,” said Diego, and Aomine abruptly remembered, viscerally so, that yeah, as much as he hated it, Diego  _ did _ know things about him that no one else did. Because he was literally created to follow in Aomine’s footsteps. 

It would’ve been a dick move to yell at this kid, even though that was Aomine’s knee jerk reaction when he had to talk about ( _ ugh _ ) feelings. Bite hard, they stay away. Run fast, they can’t follow. 

That wasn’t going to work. Not with Diego. 

Or with Momoi. He had run away once, even if he had intended to come back. No, he had to grit his teeth and bear it. Try to be a better person and all that shit. 

(God  _ damn, _ it was annoying to try to be a better person.)

“I’m just saying…” said Diego, who looked like he was torn between shutting up and forcing himself to try to help because god this little clone of Aomine’s was  _ sweet  _ and  _ genuine _ which means that being a jerk wasn’t in Aomine’s genes, it was in his soul, apparently. “What you and Momoi-san have- or had - I mean, that’s because of you and her. Not because of your genes. Or Teiko forcing it. Or else Nao and I… well, we’re not, and never wanted to be, and that’s gotta mean something, you know?”

Aomine didn’t know how to respond, so he just muttered, casting his gaze to the side, “I’ll try and visit after the Winter Cup finals. If your Ocean Mother doesn’t flip out about it.”

That was apparently a sufficient enough distraction, as Diego whooped and threw his arms around Aomine, who startled, and then huffed out a laugh at how impossibly weird things had become. Just when he’d fallen into the illusion that, after all that Legacy stuff, the Truly Bizarre Shit was over, he’s being hugged on the beach by his clone who lived a peaceful life in Mexico. 

He did his best back-pat that he’d seen Youji do with kids, and while his was definitely more awkward, it got the point across, and Diego hummed happily. 

“I’ll ask my Mom,” said Diego, pulling back, eyes shining in a cheery, beatific way that Aomine was damn sure his own never had. “I want you to see it. The Projects that lived, what we made after everything that had tried to kill us. What we’ve built despite it all.” 

With that, Diego turned to face the ocean, and he looked at it longingly, smiling. He shifted his backpack slightly and turned back to grin at Aomine. “See you soon?” 

“Don’t favor your right leg,” responded Aomine, for lack of any more emotion he could spare. He couldn’t do it, it was too hard, but it was as good a farewell as he was going to choke out.

Diego laughed. “Okay! Bye, Aomine-sensei!” 

And then, in a flash of blue, he was gone, leaving Aomine with no other choice than to turn back to land, to where he needed to return to whatever awaited him.

\---

When Aomine returned, the JSDF parking lot outside the entrance was thankfully empty minus Momoi. She tried not to put too much thought into why they were doing this in a parking lot again. Something about objects in transit, moving destinations. Impermanence. 

He stood about four feet away from her. Not close enough to touch, but if one of them took a step forward, they could easily fall into an embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, and his eyes widened slightly. “I didn’t know how else to tell you what I was thinking. About us. And all of that. I still don’t know a better way.” She broke their met gaze to look at his body. He was not in a running stance, or tense enough to bolt away. He easily could, definitely. But he seemed committed to staying in this spot. At least for now. 

He scratched the back of his head, sighing. “Well, I didn’t know how to answer. But I knew how to run away, so,” he gestured off in the distance to his mountain, as she now thought of it. “I don’t know how to answer you, either.”

An impasse. But he was standing here, the same way she was. Wasn’t that some kind of answer in itself?

“Diego-kun told me...” she said, and Aomine tilted his head in acknowledgement of hearing her. “Diego-kun told me that he and Nao-kun were never together like that. He said he never felt that for Nao. And,” she cautiously watched Aomine, just waiting for him to sprint, “It seemed pretty clear that he has feelings for his friend.” 

“So we can love other people,” said Aomine, his voice neutral, guarded. But not panicked like it was when she first brought this up to him, back at the time that felt forever ago. Had it really only been a few days?

But there was still something there she didn’t know how to analyze. Since when had he become so hard to read? 

“Diego-kun can. I didn’t get any data on Nao-kun’s experience with that,” said Momoi, and Aomine huffed out a laugh.

“Data? Seriously?”

She couldn’t help but laugh too. “Don’t make fun of my data. It’s all I have some days.” 

The air seemed less tense now. She took a tentative step forward. Now there was three feet between them. She looked up at him, taking in his broad chest, strong jaw, closely cropped hair. If she got slightly closer, she could probably feel his warmth, always running just a little bit hot. 

But she didn’t. She instead looked up at him and said, “What are you thinking?” 

For a second, it looked like he was trying to turn away from her. His body shifted, tense. But she held her ground, keeping her gaze firm. 

“You were right,” said Aomine, and her heart sank, although she wasn’t sure why. Wouldn’t that be what she wanted to hear? “We should… be with other people. To see if we can love someone besides each other.”

She knew he didn’t mean love like the love she felt for her Generation, or Michiru, or even the other Guardians that had kept them safe once they arrived. It wasn’t the love that Momoi had felt when Aya, Riko, and Reo had supported her. Or the love she felt for humanity and the world, the humans she had once both hated and feared on some level, and now, despite their collective flaws, felt a part of. 

No, the love they were discussing here, standing in this parking lot, three feet apart, was the kind that they had found after Teiko. Or maybe it was the one there all along, but sleeping underneath the expectations placed on them. What was the difference between the duty they had been assigned and what they would have felt regardless of their designations? 

“Okay,” she said, and isn’t this what she wanted? Him, standing here, agreeing with her? Surely he had had some time to think between when they last spoke and now. She thought of her conversation with Diego, and if, perhaps, Aomine had had a similar one with his clone. 

So they stood there, a few feet apart, keeping their cautious distance. As it should be, shouldn’t it?

But all she wanted was to throw her arms around him and cry into his chest, the way she had so many times before. As GM-P256. As Pink. And finally as Momoi Satsuki. 

Instead, she said, “So… what are we then?”  _ Friends? Exes? Members of the same Generation? _

None of that could possibly encompass what they’d been through with each other. They’d have to make a new word for them, something to say, “ _ He protected me as much as he could when everything was awful. I think they broke his legs because of it, but he never confirmed it. I don’t think anyone knows me as well as he does. I love him but we can’t keep going if we’ll ever learn who we are supposed to be, outside of each other. I can’t picture my life without him there.”  _

“I don’t know,” he said, looking, to his credit, like he also had been genuinely trying to find a word. Despite his aversion to anything sincere, he did try, at least, for her. “Teammates?” 

Teammates. Right. The basketball team. 

She couldn’t help but laugh. From Generation members to teammates. At least them working towards a common goal hadn’t changed. 

“Yeah, that works,” she said, and he smiled a rare, soft, sad smile back at her. She didn’t know where to go from here, in this new world where they were not each other’s, but still part of something bigger than them. 

“Your hair,” he said abruptly, and she instinctively reached up to touch it, the asymmetry of it still knocking her off-kilter in a good way. “Was that a deliberate choice or was there some sort of accident at the salon?”

“Mean Dai-chan!” she said, twisting her face in an exaggerated pout, and then stopping. Could she still call him that? 

But he didn’t correct her, and instead shrugged and said, “Looks like… I don’t know. A hacker in one of those movies Sayuri watches. It’s cool though.”

“That’s what I was going for,” she said, and held one of the longer locks between her fingers. “Felt like changing something.”

He ran his fingers through his own hair, gazing up at the sky. “Yeah,” he said, and then looked back at her. “Yeah, I get that.”

\--

“ _ This is GM-B599, and he is your mated pair,” said the scientist briskly, and GM-P256 peered curiously at the Project that stood at his side. “You two are expected to get along. I’ll be leaving you two here; I’ve other business to attend to.” With that, he left the room, closing the door behind him. _

_ The boy was in her same Generation, she’d been told, but they had not yet introduced her to all of them. She had managed to find some data from insecure tablets on them, but it was nothing truly personal about the Projects- just some genetic stats, how fast the Project was, strength capability - things that told her nothing about who the person actually  _ was _. _

_ Was he kind? Or was he going to be mean to her? Did the other Projects have mated pairs? What was a mated pair anyway? What role was she expected to fill in this smaller unit she was now assigned to? In her wider unit in her Generation, she was the watchtower, the control center, the analyst. She knew her role and she was very good at it. _

_ But in this unit of two, what was her purpose? What was his? _

_ She watched his eyes, a deep blue that matched his hair, flicker over her, and then he stepped forward. She didn’t feel the usual sort of fear she felt with other Projects she didn’t know, especially if they were bigger or stronger than her. But she was still anxious about what she was supposed to be doing, and what would happen to her if she failed that expectation.  _

_ So she said what came to her mind first, even though, in hindsight, it could have been dangerous to be so vulnerable. But he also looked like, for a moment, there was some sort of vulnerability in his face too, as if he felt the same pull she did to be exposed in this manufactured relationship handed to them. As if they’d been given an opportunity to be soft in this world of sharp edges. _

_ So, before she could change her mind, she inhaled and blurted out “I’m scared!”, clenching her tiny hands to her chest. She ducked her head to hide behind her curtain of pink hair. She didn’t know what was expected of her, either by the scientist or this other Project. Or what would happen after her outburst.  _

_ “You mean you’re scared of the scientist? He’s gone now. It’s just us.” The other Project sounded confused, and she heard him step closer to her. As if he had been born to do so, he pulled her in, even though showing affection or attachment was a risk at Teiko. His movements were brusque but he took care to not yank her too hard. He awkwardly patted her on the back, as if he was learning how to touch another for the first time.  _

_ He probably was. _

_ This was the first time, GM-P256 thought, that anyone had held her like this. She did not think it was possible. Was he even allowed to do this?  _

_ Regardless, he did so anyway, and she slumped into his arms, her rabbit-fast heart beating a tattoo of fear, and then slowing as she tucked her head into his sternum. His voice thrummed in his chest as he said, “But if you’re gonna be a scaredy-cat I can fight what you’re scared of. No one can beat me.”  _

_ He sounded so confident. So sure that anything against him would fail.  _

_ And if she were standing behind him, she’d be fine.  _

_ So, she believed him, and held on tight until her breathing evened out, safe, briefly without worry or fear.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this giant, off-the-rails spinoff story! Some fun behind-the-scenes for you...  
>   
> [Here is a playlist for the fic! ](https://stifledlaughterao3.tumblr.com/post/638217336796626944/i-get-to-see-the-sun-every-day-now-he-and-i-get)  
>   
> Originally Tala had a much larger role in this- I had her as a Bronze heart/Gold eye, Bronze being a designation I made up that has camouflage, an abandoned Teiko concept that was used in Splices. However that got too complicated so I made her just Gold Splice. She also had a side backstory as to where she came from but it just didn't fit in the end so I made it so that neither she nor Takeshi remembered their actual roots.
> 
> Also, I was going to have Aomine develop some absolutely wack powers where he finds out that if he runs a certain way covered in electrical wires, he can make lightning? I just wanted him to have some truly powerful offensive capabilities, but in the end, I also scrapped it.
> 
> I know that Shigure was not in this- frankly there are a LOT of moving parts here and I always felt Sayuri had a larger role as Aomine's "guardian" than Shigure, so I wanted that to be the focus for this story. Shigure is cool though!
> 
> I have a final part of this trilogy in mind that is completely different than the original end I had for this series. I was going to have Aomine stay in Tokyo and date a guy who suspiciously resembles Kuroko (I liked how in KNB canon, it's sort of hinted that he and Kuroko were a vague thing or at least had feelings, but it didn't work out due to Aomine's bullshit). Eventually they would break up when the guy leaves, and Aomine learns about dating other people, and then he and Satsuki get back together (she dates others as well).
> 
> However, the idea I have now is far better than that, since I learned the Aomine I made here needs to focus more on personal development before dating again, which is why I'm hinting at the end that he goes to the Rainbow Village after graduation.
> 
> One of the things I deliberately chose to change about D:M canon is umisabaku once said in an ask that Aomine can’t run on water, which I promptly forgot, and then wrote the story, and then in doing research on a part of D:M I came across that post and was like “Whoops'' so that’s on me. But since it’s such a huge part of this story with Diego running on the ocean, I couldn’t change it without seriously altering the story. I, in general, tend to make character’s superpowers stronger in my fanfic across all canons because I just like writing about magical/superpowers haha.
> 
> I do not know when I'll write this next story in this series to be honest! I have tons of other stories I need to write (I am writing a ton of Boku no Hero Academia stories, if you're in that fandom!) as well as my metalcore band KnB AU. But I need everyone to know I think of D:M like... daily, haha, so there will be, for the foreseeable future, many stories from me about this universe.
> 
> That said, if you do want to see the next story in this series, you can subscribe to the series (not this work) in order to see the last story in the trilogy, whenever that may be! :) And again thank you so much for reading my incredibly self-indulgent fic-of-fics!


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